


Baptism by Fire

by EatYourSparkOut



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Altar Sex, Bickering, Fuel sharing, Hate Sex, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Religion Kink, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Riding, Sharing Body Heat, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EatYourSparkOut/pseuds/EatYourSparkOut
Summary: When a routine exploratory mission becomes a matter of survival, Getaway has to confront the idea that maybe animosity isn't theonlything he feels towards Rodimus.
Relationships: Getaway/Rodimus | Rodimus Prime
Comments: 138
Kudos: 233





	1. Chapter 1

For one brief, sweet moment, Getaway considered letting Rodimus die. 

He’d seen the trap laid at the entrance to the crumbling structure, a scant few metres beyond the yawning archway. It was so obvious that even a bot fresh out of Ops training would have recognized the mechanism for what it was—classic pressure plate, raised just a bit higher than the tiles around it. Rudimentary, but effective. 

A cursory glance at the walls had revealed more than a few suspicious seams. Gaps that were just a bit _too_ wide. Fissures at odds with the rest of the edifice’s smooth construction. He’d bet ten shanix that something fun lay behind them. 

Of course, their _illustrious_ captain hadn’t seen the trap. Instead, he’d blundered straight on through the archway, wearing that stupid, cocksure grin of his—the one that Getaway more often than not wanted to wipe away with a well-placed shot—and stepped right onto the protruding plate.

Almost immediately, Getaway had picked up on the distinct sound of half-deteriorated parts grinding against one another—ancient engineering activated again after years of dormancy. He’d watched the dust float to the ground as the walls prepared to shift. 

And he considered doing nothing. 

Was he really going to risk his spark for this idiot? If all went according to plan, Rodimus would be out of the picture before too long anyway.

But no, it was too early. He hadn’t set things in motion yet, and losing Rodimus now could throw all of his well-crafted strategies into disarray. Not to mention, cast too much attention on him. It would be too convenient—the elimination of his main opposition shortly before launching a ship-wide mutiny. They would want compassion, _Understanding_. They’d want a bloodless takeover, so they could recharge better at night and pretend they hadn’t compounded whatever guilt already plagued them. 

Fine. He was going to save the moron. Didn’t mean he couldn’t be bitter about it. 

Getaway sprang forward, barrelling into Rodimus with a forceful crash that momentarily knocked the air from his vents. And if he made sure to jam a knee into a sensitive joint in the process, well, that was just compensation. Rodimus’ yelp was swallowed by the deafening sound of the trap activating—a series of stone plates slamming together in quick succession, right where he’d been standing

They collided with the ground, barely clearing the trap. The wind generated by the impact of the slabs swept over them, far too close for comfort. Still, they were alive.

Getaway glanced over his shoulder to confirm that they hadn’t set off a chain reaction that would require them to take off at a sprint. But the trap appeared to be settling—thick plates pulling back into their alcoves like a turtle retreating into its shell. 

Crisis averted, he looked back to Rodimus, who was staring up at him with wide optics, and a gaping mouth that severely diminished his attractiveness. 

“You—” Rodimus started. He didn’t seem to know how to express the gratitude that Getaway deserved, after that little stunt, and after a moment’s struggle finally settled for a weak “Ow?”. 

Getaway snorted. It seemed a minor concussion had done little to improve the captain’s eloquence.

“Next time, maybe consider letting the _expert_ lead the way, hm?” But no, Rodimus had been too busy playing the _dashing_ adventurer. Asking him to proceed cautiously was like asking Magnus to forgo the Oxford comma. Of all the mecha to get stuck doing planet-side reconnaissance with, fate had granted him the one who thought hurling himself off spaceships was fun provided there was a meteor to catch you.

Rodimus shifted, his guilt made apparent by the defensive way he hiked up his spoiler. Getaway was gratified to see that the collision had left one of his helm fins bent nearly sideways. 

“Whatever. Let me up.” 

Getaway realized then how entangled their trajectory had left them. Below the waist they were a nest of limbs, and as Rodimus struggled to sit up the movement brought them almost chest to chest. 

Not surprisingly, Rodimus radiated heat—a welcome balm against this planet’s bitter cold. He didn’t seem to have any of the crystal formation Getaway did. There was no frost decorating his smooth plating, no ice trying to creep into his transformation seams. Fragging outliers. 

The movement had also brought Getaway’s knee to rest between Rodimus’ thighs, stopping just shy of his panel. It would be easy enough to close the distance and—and what? Gah. 

Getaway wrenched himself away, ignoring the weird expression that flitted across Rodimus’ face. He rose unsteadily to his pedes, almost slipping on the thin sheen of frost that coated the floor. He very pointedly didn’t offer Rodimus a servo up. 

“You're welcome,” he snapped, unexpectedly riled. He didn’t care whether Rodimus lived or died—why should he care for his nonexistent gratitude? He didn’t need _validation_ from a washed-up prime. 

It was the nonchalance, he decided. That singular disregard for his own life. Getaway had been onlined fighting; he’d never known a day that wasn’t a struggle—against the Decepticons, against the world, against himself. Rodimus acted like he was _invincible_ , and it grated, left Getaway feeling raw and cheated. 

Rodimus didn’t _deserve_ that confidence, and Getaway looked forward to stealing it from him some day. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Rodimus muttered, brushing invisible dust from his frame. Getaway turned back to the entrance, surveying the carnage. The traps had been old. Chunks of stone littered the ground from where they’d been cast off the slabs, and knocked free from the walls. There was a new series of deep cracks running up the sides of the passageway and into the ceiling, and as Getaway watched, those cracks continued to creep incrementally towards one another. 

“Huh. That could’ve been worse,” Rodimus observed.

“Shhh,” hissed Getaway, trying to—yep, there it was. Attuning his sensors to their surroundings, he could feel a minute tremor in the substructure, one that marked a shifting in the architecture above them. 

He whipped around.

“ _Run_ ,” he snapped, before promptly taking his own advice. 

Rodimus was on his own this time.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” shouted Rodimus.

It would’ve been faster to shift to alt, but the passage was too narrow to allow for tight maneuvering, so they made due with their feet. Rodimus had been smart enough to not question him, at least, and Getaway could feel him at his heels as they sprinted down the corridor. 

With a loud crack—like the snap of a supporting strut—the ceiling caved in behind them. Getaway could hear the rocks crashing down in a cascade of shoddy engineering and time-worn pillars, but he didn’t turn to look. 

He kept half an optic on their surroundings as they ran—scanning for more traps as best he could—but it was getting dark fast, and the falling rocks were beginning to blot out the light as they piled up at the entrance. The ground shook with their impact, but his footing was sure, unlike Rodimus’—who stumbled several times as they made their escape. 

Getaway skidded to a halt just as the growing dim shifted to a deeper blackness. That had to be far enough; he wasn’t going to sprint blindly into whatever else this place had lined up for them. He heard Rodimus screech to a halt as well, and for a moment they stood frozen, holding their vents half in concentration, half in anticipation. Getaway hoped that he’d been right about the distance. 

Their only source of light winked out with one, final clatter. The rockslide settled, and they were left wholly in the dark. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” said Rodimus, his voice startlingly close. The human expletive sounded harsher, somehow—more real. The dim glow of his biolights was almost enough for Getaway to make out his shape in the gloom.

“Could you shut up for five seconds,” Getaway whispered venomously. He listened harder, but the only sound beside the laboured rattle of their fans was the clatter of pebbles as things fell into their final alignment. He engaged his HUD, scanning for structural weaknesses, but everything seemed relatively solid. For now. “I think we’re okay.”

“Third time lucky?” 

Getaway ignored him, and activated the light he’d had installed in his helm. The beam cut through the darkness ahead of them, illuminating the large, central room they’d emerged into. When he swung his helm to the side, Rodimus fell back with a yelp, temporarily blinded 

Whoops, not sorry. 

Turning back revealed the solid mass of stone that now blocked the entrance. Getaway didn’t need to examine the wall of rubble to know that they weren’t getting out the way they’d come in. 

“Hey, Mags,” said Rodimus from behind him. “Things went a little sideways here. We’re gonna need a pickup. ” He paused. “Bring explosives.”

Getaway shook his helm. What a mess.

“Actually, scratch that. Just bring Brainstorm.”

Getaway redirected his attention to the room they’d found themselves in. The inside of the stucture was as glacial and intimidating as the mountainside it protruded out of. It was cast in the same smooth, black stone as the archway they’d initially stumbled upon—a colour that leeched any remaining warmth from the air. 

He proceeded carefully down the short staircase, cognizant of setting off another trap, but it seemed clear enough. He strolled to the centre of the room—with all its looming pillars, reaching for a sky they’d never see—and looked down to the mosaic at his pedes. Mortilus. Identifiable by the characteristic spikes crowning his helm. And spilling into his gaping maw, the sparks of a thousand Cybertronians slated to face their last judgement. 

Something prickled at the base of Getaway’s spinal strut. He stared at the image, and Mortilus stared back.

“Okay, bad news,” said Rodimus, from directly beside him. Getaway had to clench his fist to keep from flinching. “My communicator’s not working.”

 _I’m surprised anything’s working in that empty space you call a helm_ , he thought sourly.

“So try again.”

“I _did_. Look, try yours. Mine probably got screwed up when we hit the ground.”

Well, like they said. If you wanted anything done right...

Getaway tried hailing the Lost Light. 

Nothing. 

He tried Skids’ personal comm, and got the same echoing silence. 

That… wasn’t good. It wasn’t the worst situation he’d been in, but it definitely wasn’t good. 

Now Rodimus was the one studying the mural. 

“Creepy,” was all he had to offer. Imagine that. The death-bringer, creepy.

“Mortilus isn’t usually meant to be a comfort.” 

Rodimus shrugged. 

“Depends on who you ask,” he said. 

That… was almost insightful. Colour him surprised. 

“Anyway, you manage to get a hold of anyone?” Rodimus asked, before Getaway could wonder whether the history in the answer was worth digging up.

Getaway shook his helm, shuffling it to the back of his processor, for now. 

“Mine’s out too.”

“Sooo, we’re stuck. Awesome.”

“Yeah, remind me—whose fault is that?” 

Rodimus waved a servo dismissively. 

“Doesn’t matter whose fault it is. We’re stuck; now we’ve gotta figure out how to get _un_ stuck.” 

“Oh, it’s that simple, is it?”

“Sure,” shrugged Rodimus. “I mean, the other ground parties have our general coordinates. Once they’re done with their own scouting they’ll head back to the Lost Light, and then when they figure out that we’re missing they’ll come and scoop us up. It’s not like this place is easy to miss.” 

That was a lot of ‘ifs’, and no guarantees. Getaway wasn’t about to rely on a phantom rescue party to come and save the day. He wasn’t about to rely on anyone that wasn’t himself. 

He hummed noncommittally, and swept the room again. For such an impressive structure, there wasn’t a lot of interest contained within. Apart from the mosaic, it was daunting, but plain. A couple of abandoned braziers. A few carved benches. An empty basin. 

Forward, however…

Ahead of them lay another ornate, twisting archway. From this distance, his light failed to penetrate the blackness, revealing nothing of what lay beyond. Getaway moved towards it. 

“Count yourself lucky,” he said. “Escaping is what I do.”

“Where are you going?” Rodimus asked, but he moved with Getaway, so as to keep within range of the thin illumination his headlamp provided.

Closer now, he could see that the walls beyond the archway were different; they were rougher, untouched by Cybertronian engineering. 

“Come now, captain,” Getaway said sardonically. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

And with that, he stepped lightly into the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I’ve been playing tomb raider. Yes, Getaway’s an asshole who often thinks awful things. Yes, I love him anyway. 
> 
> I’m going stir-crazy in my 200sqft studio, but social distancing is important so I’m coping by writing fic around all my term papers. It’s not quite quarantine fic, but ‘trapped together’ feels very topical right now XD
> 
> I can’t say when I’ll be able to continue this, but rest assured it’s a top priority once I make it through this very bizarre school year. 
> 
> I hope everyone is taking care in these complicated times <3


	2. Chapter 2

It was colder in the tunnel. 

The frigid air needled at Getaway’s exposed cables as they proceeded carefully down the passage, making him clamp down his armour in an instinctive bid to conserve heat. Why any mecha would have chosen to settle here was beyond him. Surely, there had been more _habitable_ planets to colonize? Ones that didn’t run the risk of forcing you into stasis because you’d made the mistake of going for a goddamn walk.

He shrugged off the discomfort. For now, the chill only served to sharpen his senses. It might be a different story later—if and when they finally stopped moving—but that was a problem for the future.

“So, why do you think our comms are out?” asked Rodimus, who as far as Getaway had figured couldn’t have silence for longer than a minute at a time.

“You mean besides the fact that we’re underground?” Everyone knew that standard comms went a little wonky in subterranean spaces. Pit, the ones they retrofitted actual miners with weren’t any better; he’d installed one prior to a mission once only to spend most of the assignment miming at Skids when his “upgrade” had fizzled out halfway through.

“Yeah, obviously.” 

Getaway shrugged, even though Rodimus was unlikely to see it in the murk. Or maybe he could. He was walking a bit too close for Getaway’s comfort—who didn’t like people in his space on a good day. And spoiler: it wasn’t a good day. 

The only reason Getaway hadn’t made him take a step back was that their proximity meant he could take advantage of Rodimus’ capacity to double as a space heater. The warmth was welcome enough that he was willing to put up with the occasional brush of plating.

“Could be the material the place is made of,” he finally said. “But my speciality isn’t minerals, or tech.” What good was speculating? Their comms didn’t work, and thus, it was up to him to save the day. Maybe Rodimus would be so grateful he’d do him a favour and keel over upon reaching the ship. Cause of death: punctured ego. 

Eh, a mech could dream. 

“Right. The famous escapologist is gonna dazzle us with one of his tricks,” Rodimus said, so neutrally that it immediately put him on edge. “Hey, answer me this. If we’re trying to get out, why are we headed _deeper_?” 

Getaway snorted. “Trust me,” he said—though that was the last thing Rodimus should do— “we weren’t getting out the other way.” _Someone_ had made sure of that. “Besides, I want to know what we’re working with.” _And what we’ve got to watch out for_. 

He doubted there was anything living in the caves, between the inhospitable outdoors and the equally nasty traps, but he hadn’t survived this long by being sloppy.

Getaway dragged his fingers along the hard and unforgiving surface of the wall. The cave was natural, probably carved out by a river that hadn’t flowed in aeons. It was too rough to have been tunneled by mechanical means—too _inexact_. Cybertronians were nigh on obsessive about symmetry. 

Still, that didn’t mean there wasn’t any trace of its mysterious prior occupants. There were places where shallow gaps had clearly been widened to allow mecha to pass comfortably side by side. The sloping tunnel briefly gave way to a set of roughly hewn stairs, before smoothing out again. And as they proceeded farther, long-desiccated torches began to appear on the walls. There was a faintly acrid smell to the air—musty, but sharp, like decaying metal.

Upon reaching a fork in the path, they went right. 

Another one, and Rodimus groaned.

“You know, when you said adventure I was expecting more cool stunts, less stumbling around in the dark. Maybe a weird statue or two. _Definitely_ not a slagging maze.”

“Afraid I’ll lead you astray, Captain?” Getaway let the honey drip from his voice, noxious and sweet, just to hear the confused putter of Rodimus’ engine. Primus, he was too easy.

“Look just—just pick a direction. I don’t care.”

Left didn’t take them far, but it did offer a change of scenery. More than that, it affirmed his earlier suspicions. There were no living things left in this place. The dead, however, were another matter.

Getaway looked at the alcove—with its hard, hollow shelves packed to the brim with Cybertronian parts—and felt the weight of this place press down on him just a little bit more.

He swept his head along the grisly collection, and under his light empty sparkchambers flickered briefly back to life. Processors winked at him from where they sat wedged between t-cogs, languishing from disuse. This wasn’t some haphazard arrangement. The positioning of the parts was too deliberate—artful even—forming neat, branching patterns that crept along the shelves and stretched upwards towards the ceiling. 

It felt significant. It felt… reverent. 

“What. The fuck,” said Rodimus, for the second time that day. The profanity felt even more out of place this time—almost blasphemous in the face of so many dead Cybertronians—and like that, the spell was broken.

Getaway sighed.

“It’s an ossuary,” he said. “Look at the parts. It’s Rossum’s trinity.” 

“Yeah, that’s great. Uh, how ‘bout the dead guy?” 

“Which one?”

Presumably, Rodimus meant the corpse laid out on the slab in the middle of the room. The mech might have been sleeping, except that any remaining colour had been leeched from his plating years ago. Positioned on his back, he stared up at the ceiling with vacant optics. 

There wasn’t much ice inside the caves—this far from the gusty entrance, and the planet’s generous precipitation—but enough time had passed that frost had begun to accumulate in a thin cast along the brittle frame. There was a deep blue cloak fastened around the corpse’s throat, acting as a buffer between it and the slab. An ashen smear on an indigo backdrop. Getaway could just make out the shape of a weapon laid out beside it—a gun of some kind. 

He could also see that there was a _second_ corpse in the room—one that Rodimus had missed entirely. Its hand stuck out from behind the slab, limp and grey. But he supposed that one didn’t have the same gravitas as Mr. Grave Goods. 

“Both!” said Rodimus. “Either. Seriously, what’s _up_ with this place?”

“Uncomfortable around the dead, Captain?” Thinking about the mechs that hadn’t thrived under his command, perhaps? 

“I’d rather spend my time with the living, where it counts,” Rodimus said. That was a yes, then. 

Getaway didn’t mind the dead himself. They were useless, empty husks for the most part. And sometimes, they were a reminder. Death was for the careless—for those who got too comfortable with their lot. _Just another one for the discard pile_.

That wouldn’t be his future. He was destined for better things. Better than those other poor saps on Corcapsia. Better than _Rodimus_. 

Rodimus shifted, as if to stride forward, and Getaway held out an arm to stop him from walking into the tripwire. 

“Second time,” he said mildly. 

“What?” 

Getaway knelt, and pulled a knife from his subspace. The cord was thick, but his blade was sharp enough to do the job.

The severed line whipped free from his fingers as the tension was released all at once. A spear shot out of a metal panel affixed to the wall, stopping just short of embedding itself in the opposite side of the passage.

“Next time, that’s your spark,” Getaway said, as he stood up again. “Or if you’re lucky, your fuel pump.” _And then you can flail around like a pinned insecticon while I decide whether or not to free you._. “So if you’re not keen on spending more time among the dead…”

“Treat every room like it wants to kill me. Got it.”

Rodimus peered at the end of the spear, which—unlike most of what they’d seen—had been fashioned from some kind of metal. 

“Not the Cybertronian tech you’d expect, huh?” he mused. “I mean, I know Cyclonus loves to show off his sword, but it’s not like they didn’t have guns in the Golden Age. Where are the—I don’t know, lasers?” 

“I’m sure they’d be devastated that their death traps didn't live up to your primely expectations,” Getaway deadpanned. “Are you really _asking_ for more explosions?” 

“Come on. You can’t tell me it isn’t weird.”

Getaway shrugged. 

“They were probably making due,” he said. “You’ve seen this rock; it’s barren. I’m sure they had to strip down their ships to build the settlement even. Why waste all that on corpses?” 

Nothing else stood out as immediately dangerous, so he set a course for the corpse in question. Rodimus followed. 

“Besides, dead is dead,” Getaway said. “Doesn’t matter if it's a pistol or a javelin that does it.” _And they were good enough to catch you, weren’t they?_ He hoped that Rodimus would put up a better fight than that, if it ever came down to it.

“Okay, old school. I can dig it.” 

Getaway looked briefly at the face of the corpse, frozen in a state of blank puzzlement, as though it weren’t sure how it’d ended up here. He made a note of the thermal armour—extra insulation for this icebox of a planet. But then his optics were drawn to the ornate clasp of the cloak. He imagined what it might look like nestled at the hollow of his own throat. 

Rodimus followed his gaze to the clasp, and then down to the equally embellished nucleon rifle the mech had been buried with. He whistled. 

“Guess that explains the traps. Y’know, if they were worried about looters.”

“Yep,” Getaway agreed. “Smart move.” He reached for the clasp, and Rodimus caught him halfway there. His touch seared—a band of fire around his wrist.

“What are you doing?” Rodimus hissed. 

“Looting.”

“ _Seriously?_ ”

“I mean, he’s not using it,” Getaway pointed out. And while some of the appeal lay in its aesthetic, in this case most of his motivation was practical. The cloak looked warm, and it would be better than nothing. Not all of them ran like a furnace. 

“Yeah, but what if you like, upset something?”

“I think we’ve established that out of the two of us, I’m the one less likely to commit suicide by ancient deathtrap,” Getaway said. 

“Yeah, but what if you _upset _—” Rodimus paused. “You know. Something”.__

__Oh, that was cute. He believed in _ghosts_. But from the mech who conflated science with magic, not shocking. _ _

__Getaway stared at Rodimus, unimpressed, and Rodimus flushed._ _

__“I’m just _saying_ —a little respect for the dead never hurt anyone. Or got them ripped apart by empties. On the _off-chance_.”_ _

__“This isn’t ‘It Came From The Cryo-Crypt’,” Getaway said. “You have two seconds to let go of me before I deck you.”_ _

__That was maybe pushing it. He didn’t have any real authority here, much as it rankled. Physical assault could get him brig time in no seconds flat if Rodimus remembered to punish him when they got back. He just needed Rodimus to _let go_. _ _

__Rodimus released the grip on his wrist, and with it went the hot, prickly feeling that’d begun creeping up Getaway’s arm._ _

__“Fine! Okay,” relented Rodimus. “But for the record, _I’m_ not part of this.” He said the last bit a little louder than necessary, considering how close the two of them were standing. _ _

__Getaway looked the corpse over one more time—the still, _unmoving_ frame with its dark optics and peeling funerary paint—and snorted. _ _

__The sliding clasp was solid enough to keep from breaking as he forced the frozen pieces apart, a tiny splintering of ice in the loaded silence._ _

__“Dead is dead,” he said again, before hefting the frame over the edge of the slab. It fell to the ground in a deafening clatter._ _

__Rodimus groaned. “Okay, now you’re just doing it on purpose.”_ _

__Getaway was too busy peeling the cloak from the slab to get into another argument. The material was stiff and cold, but already starting to soften under the heat of his fingers. He shook what frost he could from it, and then tossed the fabric over his shoulders—refastening the clasp and gritting his teeth against the chill. It would dissipate before long. He lamented that there wasn’t a mirror, but wasn’t about to ask Rodimus how he looked._ _

__Rodimus, who was currently occupied with the stretch of wall his light had landed on. He wore a mildly discomfited expression._ _

__“What now?” Sure, the decor was macabre, but they’d seen worse._ _

__“Nothing. Just thinking that these could have helped a lot of people.”_ _

__That was a weird thing for an Autobot to say. Their side had always taken a strong stance against scavenging, a policy which had always suited Getaway just fine. The thought of relinquishing any of his frame to an institution that’d barely let him own that—letting them scrap him for parts like some cheap memory, and use every inch of him until there was nothing left—it made him feel queasy._ _

__But things had been different before the war—or so he’d been told._ _

__“Is that what Iaconian mechs went in for?”_ _

__Rodimus shrugged._ _

__“Wouldn’t know. Never left Nyon before the war.”_ _

__Huh._ _

__Getaway rolled that one around in his helm. Everyone knew what had happened to Nyon, when they thought to remember it. A burnt out shell of a city that’d beget nothing but burnt out mechs. He’d known, of course, where Rodimus was from. He’d also assumed that he’d bailed with the rest of the flashy mid-upper class mechs when things had started to go sour. Frame like his? He’d probably been a racer before all this._ _

__He wondered what it’d cost Rodimus to escape._ _

__“In Nyon, though…” Rodimus said, trailing off. “Yeah. It was nice. Knowing that you were helping someone. Becoming a part of them.”_ _

__“By losing yourself?” Getaway couldn’t see the appeal._ _

__“Sure. I mean, it’s not like it’s the parts that make the mech. The spark’s what matters.”_ _

__He was so sickeningly _sincere_._ _

__“How… progressive of you,” Getaway said._ _

__Eager to change the subject, he moved around the back of the slab to check on the crypt’s other silent occupant._ _

___Interesting_._ _

__“This one’s newer,” he muttered._ _

__Rodimus looked the body up and down doubtfully._ _

__“Looks just as corpse-y to me. Don’t think he’s been up and walking for a while.”_ _

__Getaway shook his head._ _

__“Not new. New _er_ ,” he said. “He wasn’t interred with the other one. Look at the way he’s slumped—like he stopped to take a break and just never got up. And at what he’s got in his hands.”_ _

__“A datapad?”_ _

__“A datapad,” confirmed Getaway. He knelt down to retrieve the pad, and tried to ignore the way the fingers clutched at it as he pulled away._ _

__It _looked_ fine, besides the obvious lack of charge and the long crack running across the centre of the screen. The power sources used for pads were notoriously hardy, and with a little juice he might get the thing up and running again. Getaway stared down at the black screen, and debated whether it was worth sacrificing a little of his own energy for some information. _ _

__He tucked it away in his subspace, for now._ _

__Getaway was already feeling better—the thick mesh of the cloak trapping some of the hot air cycling through his vents and cocooning him in, if not warmth, then tepid relief. He could tell that it had lost some of its insulating properties, wasting away in the crypt, but he’d take it._ _

__“Cool, you done?” asked Rodimus. “Because if it’s all the same to you I’d love to ditch the dead guys.”_ _

__“Careful,” he drawled. “You might hurt their feelings.” But his mood had lifted—now that he wasn’t freezing his aft off—and there was no bite to it._ _

__Rodimus snorted. “I’m gonna hurt something,” he muttered under his breath._ _

__And so they went._ _

__The next fork in the road was much the same. As was the next. Each time they came upon a split in the path, one led inevitably to a morbid little alcove, and the other onward. Sometimes they hit a dead end, but it seemed like the mecha who’d modified this place had sealed off some of the narrower paths, perhaps wary of getting lost themselves._ _

__The crypts grew larger, and more ornate as they went. They incorporated more metal into their designs, and the mecha at their centre were buried with things that belied their rising status. The scant remnants of a now-corroded opulence. And occasionally, an out of place corpse—clearly deposited after the fact._ _

__Most of the crypts were trapped, in some form or another, and after one swinging axe came too close to their heads for comfort they made the unanimous decision to just leave them alone and continue on the forward path._ _

__Getaway was glad to press on. He didn’t believe in ghosts, and he had no issue with the dark, but something about playing witness to this forgotten legacy made him… antsy._ _

__He didn’t think they were very deep into the mountain. The darkness, and the cold—they were deceptive. He’d been mapping the caves as they moved, and he got the sense that they were skirting along the edge of the rock formation. It made him hopeful that if they just kept going, they’d eventually hit upon a way out._ _

__So maybe he’d been playing up his ability to escape from under hundreds of tons of rock. Sue him. They’d get out, one way or another. His future wasn’t to die here, surrounded by the ignoble dead._ _

__With his cape for warmth, Getaway kept more distance, but Rodimus seemed determined to fill the gap with words. He wasn’t entirely at ease with the fact that the babble had ceased to grate on his nerves. It kept the silence from pressing in on them, but being _comfortable_ with Rodimus was the last thing he wanted. _ _

__“Do you ever stop talking?” he asked, because he felt he should. Rodimus paused in the middle of telling him about the time he’d played a round of ‘the floor is lava’ in the smelting pools._ _

__“Nope,” said Rodimus with a pop. “I consider it my Primus-sworn duty to maintain optimal levels of Awesomeness in the environment at all times, especially when I'm stuck with killjoys who specialize in _escaping_ from conversation.”_ _

__This was better. _This_ was familiar. The simmering rage._ _

__“Have you considered that it's not the conversation I’m trying to escape, but your personality?”_ _

__“Remind me how we got stuck together again?” Rodimus asked,_ _

__“Because everyone else paired off before I could spare myself the pain.” Skids’ apologetic look as he’d made off with Nautica hadn’t done him any favours._ _

__“You know, I’m starting to get why you don’t have any friends”._ _

__The barb snuck past his guard, hooking into his spark with an unexpected tenacity. An image of Skids and Nautica laughing at the bar flickered behind his optics, and he wasn’t prepared for the _hurt_ that lanced through him, _ _

__Primus, what was wrong with him? He’d felt off-kilter ever since they’d set foot in this place, but was he really so off his game that he was going to let this—this half-cocked _hero_ get to him?_ _

__Besides, Rodimus was one to talk. He didn’t have any friends either. He just liked to pretend he did._ _

__Getaway sped up—stalking ahead, and taking the light with him._ _

__“Hey, I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve this!” shouted Rodimus._ _

__He did. He deserved_ so_ much worse.

Rodimus tried to run and catch him up to him, and the clang and ensuing curse was music to Getaway’s audials. 

“ _Hey_ ,” Rodimus said, closer this time. A servo grasped at his shoulder. 

Getaway tried to shrug it off, but Rodimus held firm.

“Hey, stop. This is stupid,” Rodimus said. “ _Both_ of us. Everything. Why don’t we just take a break? We can camp out here for the night”. 

“Here” looked the same as anywhere else—cold and uninviting.

“We’re in a cave. It’s always “night”,” he pointed out tersely. His chronometre helpfully informed him that according to this planet’s rotation cycle the sun had set an hour ago.

“I mean it. We’ve been at this a while, and it’s been days since I had a real defrag,” Rodimus wheedled, like it was Getaway’s fault he didn’t sleep enough. 

“We don’t have time to waste napping,” Getaway said, but he could feel it too. The fog creeping up on his processor from the exertion and stress of the afternoon.

“Look, just a couple hours. Enough to get our heads on straight, and then we’ll get going again.” 

Getaway weighed their options. They’d survive without recharge. It wasn’t essential—at least, not at this stage. But it’d been a long day, even before they’d set foot on this hostile world. They’d expended a lot of energy, and he could feel his self-repair hard at work in the background, trying to fix the minor damage he’d sustained tackling Rodimus to the ground. 

His readouts helpfully informed him that he was running at 72% capacity.

“Fine.”

Getaway shrugged off Rodimus’ hand, and looked around the room they’d found themselves in. Clean and corpse-free, which was really the best they could ask for. He zeroed in on a small niche in the wall, more defensible than the rest, and trudged over. He slid to the ground, his aching struts thanking him for it. 

Rodimus followed him. Of course. But he settled a few metres away, and Getaway couldn’t muster the energy to get territorial over a stretch of rock. 

“I’ll keep first watch,” he muttered. “An hour each, and then we get going.” Enough for their systems to run a check and patch anything critical. The rest could wait.

It wasn’t technically his decision, but at this point Getaway didn’t particularly care. This was his mission now; Rodimus could suck it up. 

He switched off his light, and the darkness enveloped them like a blanket, thick and oppressive. They had silence for a while—a few minutes where the only sound was the muted ventilations of the mech beside him—and then Rodimus chuckled. The sound rang hollow down the passage. 

“You know, I’ve slept in some sketchy places, but this one takes the cake”.

Getaway tried to imagine what Rodimus considered sketchy—some disreputable motel on Hedonia? That felt like his style. 

This didn’t hold a candle to the worst place Getaway had ever slept. He didn’t want to think about it, but his process threw up the image anyway. A blown-out crater on Corcapsia, waiting for pickup in a sea of dead mechs. 

“Go to sleep.” They didn’t have time for this.

“Working on it,” Rodimus murmed. “It’s kind of cold, you know.”

Getaway knew. He certainly knew better than the walking radiator, grumbling like he wasn’t custom-built forv this scenario. He doubted _Rodimus’_ fingers had started to go numb. 

“ _Tragically_ , there seems to be only one cloak, Captain.” Not that it was helping much, at the moment. He hadn’t anticipated just _how_ much colder it would get when they stopped moving, and the material wasn’t enough to keep it from seeping into his frame. “I’m sure you’ll be able to keep the ice at bay.”

“After all,” he said sardonically. “You’re so _hot_.” 

Rodimus breathed into his hands, a tiny flame flickering in the dark. 

“Keep your damn blanket.”

Rodimus went quiet, and stayed that way. After a few minutes, Getaway could only assume that he’d managed to quiet his systems enough to fall into recharge. He wasn’t so optimistic about his own prospects, when his turn came around. 

Had he ever been so cold? It was bleeding from the ground, from the wall at his back, and his frame soaked it up like a sponge. The minutes passed, and his optics began to fog up, vision going fuzzy at the edges. He gripped the edge of the cloak tighter, drawing his knees closer to his frame.

Rodimus’ biolights winked at him in the black. It would be warmer over there, he knew, but he wasn’t so desperate as to go crawling to him for help. He’d be fine. Rodimus would wake up before long, and they’d move on. Getaway could catch up on rest later, when he was less at risk of turning into an icicle. 

Time carried on, agonizingly slow. 

He shifted, and the movement was sluggish. His fuel felt like it had turned to slush, oozing along in his lines like so much curdled energon. Some of his struts had started to lock up from the cold, his frame desperate to conserve heat.

His HUD began to blink with error messages

[Operating at 40% capacity]

He’d be _fine_. 

[25%]

He didn’t need _help_.

[8%]

He couldn’t—

[2%]

There was a muted noise in the background, like someone calling his name from behind a wall of static. 

And then, nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, Getaway honey? You’re projecting. 
> 
> He’s that endless 1% on your phone battery, clinging to life out of sheer spite.
> 
> For the record, _I_ love you Roddy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, writing this was like pulling teeth. I’ve been living with my family again since I finished my degree, and it’s not good for my focus. Alone time is a fleeting fantasy. But I managed! And _surprise_ , the fic got longer. 
> 
> Here it is- the huddling for warmth chapter we've all been waiting for ;>

Consciousness returned slowly, hovering in the distance like some far-off coast. An impossible horizon that crept further away the more he pushed to meet it. 

Getaway waded through the lethargy, fighting the muddled desire to sink back into sleep. There was little relief when he finally reached shore, collapsing on the edge of cognizance. Even then his awareness was fuzzy, his systems booting up in a haze—one after the other in a drowsy queue. 

His head pounded. He felt like he’d been bowled over by a train and dragged over the tracks—more scrap metal than mech. His fingers stung where the energon throbbed through them, as though the circulation had been cut off and only just returned. Stasis cuffs? The residual numbness in his limbs made it impossible to tell for sure, but experience led him to answer _yes_ , probably.

His whole frame was tingling, beset by a warmth that bordered on painful. And that was weird because Getaway ran cold—always had. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been comfortable in the temperatures maintained on Autobot facilities, let alone _warm_. 

He’d asked a medic about it once and received some dismissive spiel about expedited spark-grafting and “drafty” MTOs. An answer and a realization all in one. 

So Getaway was used to feeling cold—down to his struts, down to his very spark. It was fine. He found his heat other places, like in the sharp success of a mission, or drinks with Skids. In the arguments that he kindled with the idiot prime, who was all the more searing when provoked. 

This heat was different; it bled through his armour to infiltrate his core, a soft invasion of his systems. It clung to him, viscous and unfamiliar, making him antsy even as it lulled his exhausted frame to complacency. Getaway usually onlined at the snap of a finger, but right now it was taking all of his concentration just to keep his thoughts from slipping through the cracks. 

He didn’t _like_ this feeling. 

This relentless fatigue dragging him down. 

This false sense that he was _safe_.

Had he been drugged? He pinged his processor for context, and received a slew of corrupted memory files.

He turned his attention to his environment instead. The source of the warmth lay at his back, oozing through his armour. Two sets of ventilations broke the silence, so the source in question was alive—another mech? 

The objects he could feel to either side of him were probably limbs, then—a pair of legs caging his frame. A heavy weight across his front completed the circle, trapping the warmth along with him.

 _Safe._ Yeah, right. 

Getaway onlined his optics, and concentrated on keeping his ventilations still and even. Nothing that would alert his—captor? Fellow prisoner? Safer to assume the first. 

Blackness greeted him, imposing and impenetrable without his light to breach it.

He noted with some consternation that the pressure on his chest was shifting, moving back and forth in a rhythmic motion. It was clear that the compression didn’t stem from whatever soft material lay draped over him. It was too deliberate for that. 

_No_ , he realized. There were _hands_ on his chassis, rubbing right where his spark sat. 

The familiarity of it made him bristle, and for a split second he forgot his training. Something of his alarm slipped through—a spike of discomfort as fleeting as it was sharp, and betrayed by the hitch of his breath. 

He reeled it in almost immediately, but it was enough. He was caught. 

_Sloppy_ , came the old reprimand. Getaway could practically see the disapproving line of Prowl’s frown—the disappointment that years of conditioning had produced an agent who could handle all manner of psychological and physical torture, but still fumbled in the face of a little vulnerability. There was a reason he’d gotten so good at _escaping_. 

The arms tightened around him, and Getaway tensed in response—ready to throw his weight backwards and unsettle them both. Then it was just a matter of getting to one of his knives. 

Unfortunately, his frame had other ideas—still leaden and unresponsive from a hard reboot he couldn’t remember initiating. He managed to jab a feeble elbow into the mech’s midsection, and received a slight grunt in response. 

_"Hey,"_ the voice complained, more _annoyed_ than threatening. “Hey, it’s me— _stop_.” 

__

It— Rodimus? 

There was an initial moment of panic— _he’d been caught, the game was up and his plans ruined_ —but that... didn’t make any sense. 

Getaway took stock of their position again—the easy way that Rodimus rearranged himself, so that the jut of his chestplate didn’t dig into Getaway’s back—and his defensiveness dissolved into confusion. 

“Just relax,” said Rodimus, “you’re still half-frozen”. He raised a hand to brush at a spot on Getaway’s mask, and a delicate sliver of ice fell away. 

A host of emotions followed in its wake—discomfort, anger, uncertainty. What the hell was going on?

“What ha—” Getaway tried to ask, his vocalizer cracking under the frost. “What happened?” _Why are you holding me?_

“I woke up early for my shift, and you weren’t answering,” Rodimus said. The concern in his voice was convincing. Getaway could almost believe it was genuine. “Figured out pretty quick that the cold had knocked you offline.”

Corrupted pathways knit themselves back together with the help of the missing information. The memories flooded in, an unpleasant montage of encroaching ice and failing systems. Well, that explained why he felt like death warmed over. 

The acknowledgement came at a distance—the concept of his _mortality_ too staggering to meet head on. There was no room for _death_ in his plan. The idea that he could have died before seeing his ambitions realized—that the universe might decide to wipe him out before he achieved his full potential—it was unthinkable.

And Rodimus— _Rodimus_ , had saved him. Oh, he was _never_ going to hear the end of this. 

“Lucky for _you_ ,” Rodimus continued, and Getaway could _hear_ the smile in his voice, smug and infuriating. “I’m hot enough for us both”. 

Ugh, was he... _flirting?_ Of course he was; that was what Rodimus _did_. Badly—with great enthusiasm, and questionable success. But Getaway was _sure_ it’d never been directed at him before. It wasn’t like he invited it, going out of his way to antagonize the mech.

“I—that’s what you’d _like_ to think,” he managed. It was, for all intents and purposes, a pretty pathetic counter. Definitely not his finest moment. 

Still, he knew that he turned just as many heads as Rodimus. And that unlike some mecha, he managed both brains _and_ beauty.

“Hey, you know I’m right,” said Rodimus. “You’re living proof that these hands can melt even the _iciest_ of sparks.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine the wink that’d almost definitely accompanied the statement.

Getaway wanted to drag Rodimus for the awful line, but cheesy or not, it’d done its job. He was now intensely aware of the fact that Rodimus was still rubbing at his chest plate—encouraging the energon flow underneath by the warmth of his palms. The hands were a threat, except that they weren’t, and they were doing a lamentably good job of coaxing heat into his frame. 

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Getaway snapped, desperate to change the subject. He was having a hard enough time grappling with the fact that he owed Rodimus his life. He didn’t need this on top of it.

Saved by the enemy—how embarrassing. 

And yet, flirting with him was somehow worse.

“Yeah, well.” Rodimus said, sobering up. “You should have. _I’m_ the fun, reckless one in this party. You’re the one with the plans, and the—the survival instincts. Leaving me to pick up the slack? _Not_ cool.”

“What do you care?" muttered Getaway. He doubted that Rodimus would’ve shed any tears if he’d woken up to find Getaway frozen to the floor. One less thorn in his side. One less thing to worry about.

“What do I _care_?” asked Rodimus. His arms tightened around Getaway again. “You’re my _crew_. You might be a self-righteous prick, but I _always_ take care of my crew. Seriously, what the hell kind of question is that?” 

Getaway struggled for a response. He couldn’t see why Rodimus would harbour any loyalty to him, _crew_ or not. He’d done nothing to earn his favour—hadn’t offered any real help on the journey, or any advice that wasn’t thinly veiled derision. All in all, Rodimus had no _real_ reason to care if he lived or died.

It didn’t make sense. 

He thought that he’d taken Rodimus’ measure—dim-wittedly optimistic, all fake cheer and shallow promises. Things he didn’t even try with Getaway, who’d made it clear from the start that he didn't have time for a half-cocked prime, basking in the limelight. 

This newfound integrity—this semblance of care—was unsettling. He didn’t know what to do with it.

Rodimus cleared his throat in the silence. 

“Besides, if you die and leave me in this creepy cave all by myself I’m going to be _seriously_ pissed.”

See, now _that_ made sense. Getaway didn’t know what to do with sincerity, but he understood self-preservation. Of course Rodimus would want to keep around anyone who increased his own odds of escape. And having been saved twice already, he assumed that Getaway was invested in his well being—as a captain and a prime if nothing else. 

Well, he wouldn’t disabuse him of the notion. It was convenient enough. 

Rodimus tucked his helm into the crook of his shoulder—casually, like it was normal to be cuddled up to the mech who you’d spent the day fighting with. Resting his chin in the space there, his ventilations ghosted across Getaway’s neck. 

Getaway had to lock his joints to repress a shiver. _Too close_.

“For the record, I’m sorry for implying that you don’t have any friends,” Rodimus said.

Getaway held stiff, unwilling to concede anything on his part, and not sure that he wanted to accept the olive branch. He wasn’t sure of _anything_ right now, except that with each passing minute he grew more and more aware of their compromising position—of the firm press of Rodimus’ frame, and the warm tickle of his breath. 

Life was seeping back into his frame, and with it, a dangerous interest. 

“I’m sure you have at least one,” Rodimus finished, mirth ringing in his voice. 

Fucking aft. 

Getaway elbowed him again, harder this time. 

Still, the interest lingered, unwilling to be brushed away by the reminder that he _hated_ the mech behind him. Attraction, loathing—It was all one and the same. 

“My t-cog is still clicking from the flash freeze,” Getaway complained, as though it were Rodimus’ fault. The words escaped him impulsively—not part of any plan. 

“It hurts.” 

It wasn’t—technically—a lie. Everything hurt. 

When Rodimus slid his hands lower—just above his hip, where his t-cog lay—the heat in him surged, pulsing in time with his fuel pump.

“Here?” Rodimus asked, splaying his fingers against Getaway’s midsection. They seared a hungry pattern into his armour.

Getaway hummed noncommittally. His optics narrowed to slits. 

If being saved by the enemy was bad, what was wanting to frag him? Treason, probably—if he weren’t the one making the rules. He supposed exceptions could be made, during this weird, uncomfortable truce. 

And he did _want_. The arousal was slowly taking root in his systems, creeping through his lines and twining around his spark. 

“Pretty sure you can do better than _that_ ,” Getaway said at last, unwilling to end the game so quickly. 

So he was horny—sue him. 

Rodimus’ hands grew warmer still, and the heat bled through the reinforced glass to pool in his belly. The cold seemed a distant memory.

“Better,” he murmured. 

“I see what I’m good for,” Rodimus said, with a small laugh. 

_Do you?_ thought Getaway. He didn’t think Rodimus saw anything at all. 

“You’ve got your uses,” he agreed, and Rodimus let out a snort.

“Knew you’d warm up to me eventually,” he said, stroking one of his thumbs along the glass. Getaway shivered. 

Primus, what was he doing? This was a terrible idea. They’d muddied the waters already with all their grudging cooperation; he didn’t need Rodimus misjudging the depths of his... regard. This was a temporary arrangement. This was survival.

Or maybe—just maybe—it was an opportunity?

Getaway wouldn’t hesitate when it came time to pull the trigger; a little mutual aid wouldn’t change that. Surely it only made things _easier_ if Rodimus had mislaid ideas about the nature of their relationship. 

He’d never see the bullet coming. 

Getaway reached for Rodimus’ hands, intending to—what? Direct him? Shove him away? 

He didn’t get the chance to find out, as the movement jostled something on his left side. He hadn’t noticed earlier—his limbs numbed by the cold—but now feeling and attention had both returned, and it was evident that much of the heat infusing his frame was streaming in from a point on his wrist.

Getaway paused. He redirected his aim, pulling loose the cloak and exposing their frames to the cold.

The frigid air was a shock to his senses, but not nearly as shocking as the thin, incriminating line that linked him to Rodimus. In the murk of the cave, framed only by the dim glow of their biolights, he thought for a moment that he must be mistaken. 

Rodimus had spliced their fuel lines together. Minor ones, granted. So small that the stream of fuel was barely a trickle; easy to control without putting the donor in danger. Checking his levels now, he was only up 8% from when he’d passed out. 

It was expertly done—surprisingly so. That didn’t stop the panic from rising up and engulfing him. 

Sharing fuel frame to frame was _intimate_. It wasn’t something you did _casually_ , for someone who spent their waking hours criticizing your every move, and who undermined your leadership at every turn. For someone who had every intention of stealing your ship out from under you. 

This was too much. Too far. 

They weren’t _friends_.

“Disconnect us,” Getaway said tightly. His fingers tightened into a fist.

“Hm? Yeah, sure. Sorry, I figured it was the quickest way to get your fuel moving again. I know some people are a little iffy abou—”

 _"Now._ Disconnect us _now_.”

The viciousness of his response must have struck a chord, because for once, Rodimus shut up. He made quick work of separating and patching the lines, unerringly unhindered by the gloom. Amidst his discomfort, Getaway wondered how many times Rodimus had done this before, to be able to manage by feel. And _when_?

As soon as he was free to move, Getaway extricated himself from between Rodimus’ legs—in what was definitely _not_ a scramble. He brushed the last remnants of slush from his frame, pretending that his joints didn’t ache with every movement, and that his plating didn’t still prickle with charge. 

He told himself that he didn’t miss the heat. 

_"Why?"_ he asked. The question, built up under so much pressure, burst out of him under the cover of darkness. Yeah, yeah, crew—whatever. Why him, why _this_? 

“Okay, look. You’ve clearly got issues with me. And it’s cool. I get it. You’re not the first,” Rodimus said. “But you saved my life earlier. So if it makes you feel better, just think of this as me returning the favour, yeah?” 

“...Fine.” That was barely scraping the surface of the problem at hand, but Getaway didn’t have a pressing desire to explain to Rodimus why he shouldn’t be so blase about feeding mecha from his own frame. 

“I mean, maybe we’ll both starve here. But at least it won’t be alone.”

And if _that_ wasn’t a depressing thought...

He flicked his light on again to reveal Rodimus, still lounging on the floor. There was a dark circle around him, a little ring of damp where the frost had thawed. His optics flitted to the patch on Rodimus’ wrist, and then away. 

“Let’s go,” he muttered. 

***

They didn’t get far before Rodimus started complaining. 

“Okay, this is stupid,” he said, holding onto the foot he’d slammed into a wayward stalagmite.  
I’m stuck to you like pink on energon, and I’m still running into things.”

Getaway shrugged. 

“It’s not my fault you don’t have headlights anywhere useful,” he said. “So unless you’ve got a surgeon stashed away in that spoiler of yours, you’re out of luck”. Rodimus could hobble his way down the increasingly narrow tunnel, and Getaway would snap a few more pictures for the scrapbook. 

“Pffft, I can do better than that.” 

Getaway watched as Rodimus groped at the nearest wall, unhooking one of the torches from its mount. 

“That hasn’t been used in ages. There’s no way it still works.” 

“Oh, ye of little _faith_.” 

Try _no_ faith, maybe. 

“You don’t even know what they used as fuel,” Getaway pointed out. “That could be literally anything.” There was no evidence that a cloth had ever been wound around its head, only a pitted, symmetrical sphere that glinted cobalt under his light. It looked like some kind of rock. 

With their luck it was probably explosive.

“Science, magic—as long as it lights up, I’m good.”

“How are you even going to _light_ it?” 

“Uh, like this?” 

Rodimus snapped, and a small flurry of sparks rained down from his fingers. Oh, of _course_. Why didn’t he set the whole tunnel ablaze, while he was at it?

Getaway huffed.

“Don’t—” 

With another snap and a small whoosh, Rodimus’ fingers caught flame. He touched them to the head of the torch before Getaway could squeeze in any other arguments against lighting ancient incendiary devices, and the torch caught fire in a brilliant blue blaze. 

Getaway waited with baited breath—one, two, three—and only released it when it seemed that they _weren’t_ about to be blown to kingdom come. 

“See? Magic: one, cursed tomb: zero.”

Getaway growled under his breath. The _inconsistency_ of Rodimus’ actions was making his head spin, and it was easy to fall back on anger. Didn’t he ever _think_? Was he so caught up in his own ego that he thought Getaway was content to live and die by his whims? _Rescued_ one moment, and obliterated the next?

He bit back the growing tirade, and in an admirable display of self-control, turned and led on. It wasn’t worth his time. He needed to focus on finding a way out of here, before he took back everything and just murdered the twit. 

The passage narrowed further, becoming tight enough that they had to turn sideways in order to feel their way through. Getaway spared a moment to thank whoever’d been responsible for allocating his alt; now it paid to have a speedster’s lithe frame, with little kibble to catch on the walls and leave him stranded. 

“Hey, are you sure this is right?” asked Rodimus, inching along behind him. His voice was thinner than usual, small and tinny despite the echo. “I mean, maybe one of those other chambers led somewhere”. 

“They were a waste of time.” 

“And this isn’t? I mean, what if this is just another dead end? What if we get, y’know—”

Getaway waited.

“Stuck,” Rodimus finally provided. 

“Nervous, captain?” He couldn’t see Rodimus’ face, but there was something in his voice... 

“No,” Rodimus protested. “I just like to know there’s a way out.”

In other words, he didn’t like to be _trapped_. Who did? Still, it shed new light on the brave face he’d been putting on this whole time. Squeeze him tight enough, and the cracks started to appear. Getaway filed the tidbit away for later. 

For a moment it seemed that Rodimus might be right—that the tunnel really would terminate in another dead end and they’d have to shimmy back the way they came. Even with their lights, the walls pressed in, and for a moment it felt like they would be swallowed up by the passage; entombed in the rock for the next set of unlucky adventurers to find. 

But then his hand met open space, and it was with a mild sense of relief that he took the final few steps and squeezed free—into a space significantly brighter than the ones that’d come before. 

Getaway wasn’t going to get his hopes up, not yet, but the light was promising. Maybe they’d escape this place yet.

He took a few steps to clear the way for Rodimus. His optics adjusted slowly, after so long in the dark, and when they’d cleared enough to discern the cavern in front of him, he stopped in his tracks. 

Behind him, Rodimus sucked in a breath.

“Woah.”

 _Woah,_ was right.

They’d been wrong, to call this a tomb. 

This was a _temple_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Chinhands* 
> 
> Getaway stop viewing all relationships as a power exchange challenge.
> 
> Come hang with me on twitter @spidingsadly if you wanna listen to me complain about not getting any fic done in real-time.


	4. Chapter 4

For a long moment, Getaway simply stood there. 

He tried to catch his breath, escaped just moments prior, but his ventilations came thin and sharp with frost and the ache in his chest refused to abate. 

Rodimus was quiet as he came forward to join him. Together, they took in the wide expanse before them—the massive cavern that some great force had carved from the landscape eons ago, and that mecha had seen fit to repurpose for their own great imaginings. He remained quiet as Getaway took one careful step forward, and then stopped again.

This place was old. Not as old as some of the ruins on Cybertron, but then, he’d never seen those, had he? There was a _gravity_ to it—like it had been waiting for them, its first supplicants in a hundred ages. It was terrible, and it was beautiful. And it made something in Getaway want to scream, until his vocalizer fizzled to nothing.

Was it the harsh, flat columns that disappeared into shadow before they reached the ceiling? Was it the face of Mortilus, etched into rock and cast in luminous metal? He was everywhere, looking down on them—though his face wasn’t the horror and malice of sparklings’ tales, just the cold patience of the grave.

Hope streamed down in the form of soft light, filtered in from above. It leapt tremulously in Getaway’s chassis, buoyed by the possibility of escape. 

It crashed down a moment later, as he realized that the source of the light lay far above their heads—too far for any mech to reach.

While they had been fumbling around in the dark, the planet’s three moons had risen. One of them could just barely be discerned through the large fissure in the cave ceiling, where the rock had long ago grown apart to let the elements in. 

Unfortunately, light wasn’t the only thing that had breached this cavern. Years of exposure had left the walls smooth and slick with ice. Getaway had climbing gear in his subspace—gear he was prepared to use in a last, desperate attempt—but he could already tell that it wouldn’t be enough. The opening was at an angle that would have been difficult to reach under ideal conditions, let alone with the wind and frost working against them. 

And even if by some miracle or test of skill he _could_ get up there without falling to an undignified end, he didn’t have a long enough rope to lower down. He would have to leave Rodimus behind. And he… well, he didn’t _care_ obviously, but he’d already gone to the trouble of saving the idiot’s life; he wasn’t about to let that effort go to waste, and render all of his suffering moot.

Getaway wasn’t interested in a stale victory. There would be time enough to deal with Rodimus, _after_ they escaped this nightmare.

A gust blew through the cavern, biting at his ankles and stirring up the soft blanket of snow that coated the floor. Underneath, a mosaic of embellished tiles winked up at him. The temple’s architects had gone to the trouble of leveling the ground—all the better to raise the harsh columns which loomed in the dim. Cast in unyielding silver, they formed a wide hall down the centre of the room, acting as a frame for the low, tiered benches which sat on either side. 

Two thirds of the room still lay in darkness, untouched by the creeping moonlight. What he _could_ see was a study in opulence—the faded trappings of the Golden Age. Getaway followed the inlaid path with his optics to where the light struck an altar, and precious metals glittered beneath the protective sheet of ice. Behind the altar sat a throne, silent and unoccupied, but no less regal for it. 

Braziers lined the pillars—twice the size of the ones they’d seen in the entrance, and nearly overtaken by the icicles which hung heavy from their frames. The pillars themselves housed hollows for long-dead lanterns, and rods from which tapestries hung—expensive cloth that had been bleached by the light and snow, and were now so brittle that they looked like they might shatter if you touched them. Whatever stories or emblems they’d once depicted were gone.

The murals had fared better, three times the size of him and embedded across the walls in a series of scenes. They were blurred by frost, and marred by gaps where the metal had fallen out to reveal bare rock, but Getaway could still make out the figures that comprised them. 

He was more concerned, however, with the figures that littered the room. Twisted forms huddled in the darkness, perched on the benches and collapsed on the floor—grotesque statues with gaping mouths but no words. An icy film covered them like everything else, preserving them as they’d been in life. 

“Our hosts?” he guessed. The snow muffled the echo of his voice. After so long in the tunnels it felt like he was listening to himself speak from far away.

Getaway moved to the nearest corpse. Empty optics regarded him, indifferent to the state of their surroundings. He nudged the mech with a foot and something jostled loose, tumbling to the ground with a tinny clatter.

 _"Really?"_ asked Rodimus. He looked askance at the finger that now lay detached on the floor. “Is it too much to ask that you just leave the dead guys alone?”

“Just checking,” replied Getaway. “You want to be _sure_ , don’t you?” He took satisfaction in the way that Rodimus hung back, out of arm’s reach. 

“What I _want_ is to get the hell out of Dodge,” Rodimus said. He grimaced. “This place is nothing but bad vibes”. 

Oh, not the _vibes_. They were a day or two from running out of fuel—quite _literally_ on Death’s door—but the _vibes_ were bad, so obviously _that_ was their biggest concern. It wasn’t like they’d lived through a _war_ , or anything. Compared to the sights and sounds of a fresh battlefield, this was nothing. 

“Need I remind you that _you’re_ the reason we’re down here in the first place?” Getaway snapped. 

“Yeah, well.” Rodimus crossed his arms and looked away, choosing to meet Mortilus’ gaze instead of his. And then, “how many of them do you think there are, anyway?” 

Getaway looked around, his headlamp flashing briefly across the hidden corners of the map. More blank faces stared back at him from the darkness. 

“I’m counting at least two dozen,” he said, shrugging off the chill that prickled at the base of his spine. “Probably twice that if we’re including the tombs”.

“Awesome.”

“Still, not exactly an army of the dead. Don’t tell me you couldn’t take on a handful of shambling corpses, o’ _fearless_ leader.”

Rodimus threw his hands up, and stalked over to the nearest brazier. As he headed away, Getaway caught something that sounded suspiciously like ‘trip you on the way out’. 

“And _that_ , would be the first smart decision you’ve made today,” Getaway said under his breath, as he skirted around the benches to the leftmost mural. 

At first glance, the scene was familiar. Typical Primalist stuff, with Primus emerging resplendent from the Well. But a closer look made him pause. Because Primus wasn’t alone. That was _Mortilus_ accompanying him— _leading_ him even. Hand in hand, they stepped towards a new Cybertron. 

Which was ridiculous. Everyone knew that Primus had been first, and that the others had come later. And if there was to be a second god depicted, why not Unicron? Primus was order and life. His counterbalance lay in the chaos of the Unmaker. Not this dusty old mortician.

There was a faint whoosh from behind him as Rodimus somehow managed to light the brazier. 

Getaway brushed his fingers along the wall, and the frost fell away to reveal the text he’d glimpsed underneath. It was primal vernacular, but the form was unfamiliar—the grammar off. He could only make out some of it. 

“The dawn of... summer,” he murmured. 

Getaway shook his head. Mortilus was contentious. There were mecha today who still considered him worthy of veneration on the sole point of his membership in the Guiding Hand. But the texts spoke little of him in the pre-schism era—of what had occurred _prior_ to his grand betrayal. When you screwed up that bad, people didn’t usually care about who you’d been, or what you’d done before. 

Getaway walked along the wall, following the mural. Mortilus was in the next image as well, his hand on Primus’ shoulder as they tended to a twinkling garden. Cybertronians sprouted from the ground, flourishing under their watchful gaze. He shook his head again. This was… wrong. Weird.

Again and again, Mortilus reappeared, always with Primus. Getaway stopped to stare at one particular depiction of them, intimately entwined. Whoever these mecha were, they hadn’t been prudes. 

“In Deaths’s hold,“ he made out. And something about a union?

“Embrace, I think,” said Rodimus, who’d finished lighting the braziers and rejoined him to squint at the wall. He’d ditched the torch. “You read vernacular?”

“Some,” Getaway admitted, grudgingly. “You too, obviously.” 

“Comes with the territory,” Rodimus said, pointing two thumbs at his chest to where the Matrix had once rested.

Getaway could picture it—the expensive tutors and private lessons. The things the mid-upper classes had scraped together the funds for in order to pretend at wealth, and that the upper castes had taken for granted. 

“They teach you that in those fancy schools?” he asked sardonically. 

“Pfft, school. Sure.”

Getaway crossed his arms.

“You should be grateful for whatever you got,” he bit out. No doubt Rodimus had spent most of his time neglecting his advantages. Rodimus, who'd been handed a ship on a silver platter and still managed to lose it to that rusted old tyrant. He’d probably skipped lessons as often as he did meetings. 

“Education wasn’t a luxury afforded to many MTOs,” Getaway added bitterly. “Not that you’d know what that’s like, Rodimus _Prime_ ”.

 _He’d_ been lucky to get the full orientation and culture packet instead of a half-glitched copy. The vernacular had been all him, driven by an interest in the historical texts he couldn’t access. He’d stolen time in-between gueling shifts and back-to-back missions to learn. Prowl had approved. 

“And you don’t know _me_ ,” Rodimus said. “So if we could chill with the assumptions, that’d be great. They’re getting kind of old.” 

“I’ve seen your file.” Most of it, anyway. Some of the details had been locked too tight for even him to access. “Forged. Entertainer class. What were you, a racer? I’m sure your life was _very_ hard.”

“Sure, I was forged,” Rodimus agreed. “For all that got me. Assigned a gig. Comfortable servitude for my first few months, and enough energon to keep me from running on fumes as long as I raked in enough money from the patrons.” 

Rodimus leaned in, optics scant centimetres from his own. The heat from his vents washed over him, but Getaway didn’t budge. He met Rodimus’ burning gaze head on.

“Until things started going downhill for Nyon. Until they decided my opinions weren’t all that _entertaining_. People didn’t want their entertainers smart. They definitely didn’t want them with smart mouths. _Political_ opinions? Forget it.”

What?

Rodimus leaned back, and the chill kissed Getaway’s faceplate. 

“Easier to toss me out and pull another one,” Rodimus said, his mouth twisted in a wry, little smile. “Someone who wouldn’t complain so much, or get any bright ideas about fair cuts and treating people like people. He shrugged. “So I hate to shatter your golden image of me, but anything worthwhile that I learned, I learned on the streets. Not at any school, and not from any old relic”.

Silence reigned. 

Getaway didn’t even know where to start. 

It _chafed_ that he’d let himself operate on faulty intel for so long. Inferences weren’t an adequate substitute for real reconnaissance—he _knew_ that—and his pride bristled at the misstep. Prowl would have been disappointed.

On the other hand, so _what?_ So Rodimus didn’t come from _privilege_. He still didn’t realize how spoiled he was, to have lived a life beyond mortars and mutually assured destruction. To have been given _primehood_ , when he’d demonstrated time and time again that he was incapable of living up to it. 

Was Getaway supposed to be impressed that he’d managed to get himself thrown out and destitute? That he’d torqued off the wrong people and ended up on his aft? All that spoke to was a piss-poor sense of strategy, and debilitating impulsiveness. 

But, he’d survived Nyon—the city no one talked about. Not because of his status. On his own. And so he rose just an _iota_ in Getaway’s estimation. 

“Fine.”

“Fine—that’s it? Just _fine_?”

Getaway stayed stubbornly silent. What else was there to say?

“ _Fine_ ,” Rodimus said, as he looked upwards in exasperation. He seemed ready to say something else, but then he caught sight of the mural. He closed his mouth, only to open it again.

“Are they—?”

“Apparently”.

There was something intensely uncomfortable about the scene, mainly, in his inability to tell where Mortilus ended and Primus began. And then there was the way that Primus bared his throat to Mortilus. The way that he clutched at Mortilus’ cape. Their _sparks_ were out, for P—someone’s sake. Getaway’s wrist throbbed. 

“I feel like there’s a joke about them _coming together_ here.”

“ _Don’t._ ”

 _Primus spare me from your horny followers_ , thought Getaway.

“I knew people who were into this kind of stuff,” Rodimus offered. “They were always coming around and talking about life and death, and how they were like, the same thing. They were _really_ into reincarnation.” His optics dimmed. “Didn’t mean too much to me, but there were some bots who liked that. You know, the idea of getting a second chance.”

“Hmph”.

“They were looking for something to save them,” Rodimus added, more quietly, and Getaway didn’t fail to notice the way that his fist had drawn closed by his side. 

That had been their first mistake then. Primus helped those who helped themselves. He wasn’t a _saviour_. He was the adjudicator from on high, and he’d been testing Getaway all his life. _He’d_ proven himself strong enough to survive. And that was why, in the end, he’d get his due. 

Getaway waited as Rodimus shrugged off whatever melancholy had settled over his shoulders. 

“It wasn’t like this, though,” he finally said. “That was just a few guys in cheap robes. This is…” he trailed off. 

Getaway knew what he meant. There was something _off_ about this place. It was something about how the myths were familiar, but just a little bit different. How the architecture was classic Golden Age, and yet somehow, just a little bit wilder. 

Something about how Mortilus’ optics watched them.

Eager to distract himself from his growing discomfort, Getaway reached for one of the objects in the hollow beneath the mural. He pulled it out and turned the container over in his hands. Oddly enough, it was made of obsidian, not metal. Glyphs had been carved into its surface, inlaid with gold. They wrapped around in a swirling pattern. Unfortunately, it was an even stranger form of vernacular, barely recognizable.

“What’s that?” 

“Proof that you should give a little more credit to ancient relics,” Getaway muttered, glancing briefly at Rodimus’ chest. “It’s a reliquary. On the inside, there’s probably some innermost energon, or pieces of sparkchamber. On the outside, it’s got their name, and all the significant events of their life.” He turned it over, trying to discern anything from the unfamiliar script.

“Whoever this mech was, they were important. Important enough that people wanted to preserve them, and their story,” Getaway said, tracing a line of glyphs with his thumb. ”They earned this.” He wondered what it had taken to attain the company of gods. 

He looked back up to see a bemused smile pulling at the corner of Rodimus’ mouth. It was more genuine than any Getaway had seen so far, and it threw him for a loop. He felt himself flush with embarrassment, heat prickling at the back of his neck.

“You care a lot about this stuff, huh?” Rodimus asked.

“No,” he snapped. He _did_ —history had always been his favourite escape—but Rodimus’ curiosity felt like an intrusion. “I just figured I should help you make up for all those lessons you missed out on,” he said snidely.

It was spite that made him drop the relic. He’d let go before he’d even given himself the chance to think about it, and then it was too late to take it back. He watched as the container shattered on the cold, hard ground, and it was easy enough to pretend that a tiny piece of him didn’t shatter with it. 

The look on Rodimus’ face should have been satisfying—now _he_ was the one caught off-guard—but Getaway didn’t feel any better for it.

“Ohh-kay”.

Getaway walked off, unwilling to be cornered by Rodimus’ scrutiny. He didn’t have to justify himself to him. 

He finished his survey of the murals instead. Mortilus killing Primus, before succumbing himself. Mecha marching into the Well, to see the both of them seated on thrones. Primus rising again. Another embrace. A new garden. Getaway found himself growing increasingly frustrated. It was wrong, of course. But, it struck a reluctant chord in him

Getaway scanned the room from top to bottom. He was determined to leave no corner unexplored, lest some heretical detail be their saving grace. 

Rodimus helped for a while, until it became clear that there was nothing left to see. But still, Getaway continued the search. What else was there to do, besides sit and rust? 

If he was going to die, he’d do it on his feet. 

And all the while, Mortilus watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getaway is one big inferiority complex wrapped up inside an even bigger superiority complex and I dunno how he doesn’t get whiplash. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter got really long, so I ended up splitting it. That means there’ll probably be another update soon :D As long as grad school doesn’t kick my ass too hard.


	5. Chapter 5

After an hour of fruitless searching, Rodimus called out to him. 

Getaway looked up from the alcove he’d been studying—were the grooves in the mural deep enough to get him past the worst of the ice? Could he scale the rest of the wall and ceiling without slipping?—to see that Rodimus had managed to cobble together a small fire pit using the debris from the room. In the centre of the pit, a pile of tapestries crackled an unnatural, sickly blue. 

Getaway couldn’t help but notice that Rodimus had built the fire as far away from their sordid company as possible. Despite his best efforts, the nearest of the corpses still cast long shadows on the floor, brought to life by the flickering flames.

After a moment’s hesitation, Getaway relented. He unlatched the cloak at his throat—which had been growing stiffer and colder as the night went on—and tossed it at Rodimus as he drew near. 

“Here, make yourself useful”.

The cloak hit Rodimus in the face, and immediately started steaming. He pulled it down to glare at him. 

"I'm not a fucking dryer," he groused. 

"You sure? You look like a tool to me." 

Rodimus’ mouth twitched, as though he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scowl. But he held onto the cloak, and his exaggerated sigh released a torrent of hot air, belaying his earlier point. After a few moments, he tossed the cloak back. 

Getaway refastened it, relaxing slightly as the warmth that settled across his shoulders. He sat down on a bare patch of rock, and tucked the fabric underneath him in order to keep the ground from leeching the remaining heat from his frame. He was sure that neither of them wanted a repeat of earlier. 

The fire had been a good idea, he admitted begrudgingly. But it wouldn’t save them. 

Rodimus sighed, as though thinking the same thing. And then he held out a small flask, and the acrid tang of engex floated Getaway’s way.

“Drink?” asked Rodimus. 

It flummoxed him for a second. Rodimus had no reason to share with him; Getaway wasn’t under the impression that he was _likable_ , or that he’d done anything to warrant the offer. But evidently, he’d decided that bitter company was better than none. 

The flames cast Rodimus’ face in an eerie blue light—sharpening his profile. He had a good nose. And a good mouth, which made drinking said engex a whole lot easier. Getaway’s gaze flickered briefly to Rodimus’ lips. 

Well, he’d be a fool to pass up fuel, wouldn’t he?

Getaway took the flask, and in the process realized how heavy his fingers had become. 

Triggering the command to open his primary intake only netted him an error message—likely the result of his earlier crash. He paused. Attempting to manipulate the manual catch with dulled sensors would be... an undignified affair. But he’d already accepted the flask, and Rodimus was waiting. 

“My fingers are still frozen,” he admitted reluctantly. “Could you—?” He held out his wrist—the _other_ one, and turned it so that Rodimus could see the seam.

“Here?” Rodimus asked, wrapping his hand around Getaway’s arm so that he could press lightly with his thumb. A little thrill tip-toed up his spine. 

“Y-ep. You found it.” Primus, he needed to get this out of his system. Somehow.

A little more pressure at the right angle, and the latch popped open. Getaway went to pour himself some engex, but his fingers trembled noticeably as he brought the flask close, and he stopped—unwilling to dump viscous fuel all over his plating. Looking undignified would be the least of his complaints if he had to sit here as it gummed up his seams. 

Rodimus took the flask back. 

“Here, let me.” 

He was careful as he poured Getaway a small shot, and a second later the engex was searing a pleasant trail down his intake. Getaway sighed, letting the heat fill him up from the inside. It would burn off quickly, but for now he could enjoy the boost to his flagging systems. 

Rodimus hadn’t moved, as though waiting for a signal. With the engex swirling through him, the press of his palm felt twice as searing.

“Another,” Getaway decided. 

An hour later found him half-slumped against Rodimus, pretending to listen to whatever misadventure he was attempting to regale him with. For convenience, Getaway told himself, though he was warm enough now that he could have poured his own drinks. 

Engex made Rodimus even more animated than usual. His breath sparked with overcharge and excitement—little lights in the darkness. Getaway had never been jealous of mecha with mouths, but he found himself watching Rodimus’ anyway, and the flexing of his throat cables as the engex slid down his throat. 

Getaway knew that he was drunk. He wasn’t _stupid_. But that knowledge hadn’t kept him from inching begrudgingly closer at Rodimus’ request. 

_”I know cuddling isn’t your kink, but I’d feel better knowing you aren’t going to turn into a bot-sicle when I’m not looking”_

They _weren’t_. Cuddling, that was. Rodimus was just acting as a handy piece of furniture, so that Getaway didn’t topple into the cloud of engex that was slowly filling the space between his audials.

Anyway, he was drunk. Or at least... tipsy. Because otherwise Rodimus wouldn’t have been able to startle the occasional snort out of him with his inane rambling, and Getaway wouldn’t have found himself thinking so much about what Rodimus’ hands might feel like sliding up his thighs instead of—whatever they were doing. Waving the flask around in a poor mimicry of Ratchet. 

Some pair they made—two mecha who’d sooner alphabetize Magnus’ editions of the Autobot Accords than spend a minute in each others’ company under ordinary circumstances. 

This camaraderie was stupid, he decided. It was a bad idea. He had… plans, of some kind. The details were fuzzy at the moment, but he knew _Rodimus_ didn’t factor into them.

Rodimus waved a hand in front of his face, and Getaway glared at it.

“Are you even listening?” Rodimus asked. 

“Trying my best not to,” he mumbled.

Rodimus snorted. 

“Way to make a guy feel special.”

“Oh, like _your_ ego needs feeding.”

“Hey, just a protip,” Rodimus said. He tapped at Getaway’s wrist, and electricity zinged up the length of his arm. “You should be nicer to the guy holding the booze.”

“Mmph. No promises.” At the moment, snide remarks were the only thing holding together the tattered remnants of his pride. 

Getaway shifted, trying to dislodge the ember that had settled in his core, nurtured by cheap engex and the press of Rodimus’ shoulder against his. If he was _really_ lucky, maybe he wouldn’t remember this in the morning. 

Quiet fell over them for a time, broken only by the crackling of the fire. A haunting tone drifted through the cavern, carried by the wind that wound its way around the columns.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You’re going to anyway.” 

“Well, yeah, but I figured I’d give you a heads up”.

“How kind,” Getaway deadpanned. 

“I’m leading by example,” said Rodimus. “Maybe it’ll inspire other mecha to be a little less _prickly_ , and a little more fun.”

Getaway snorted.

“You couldn’t lead a parade”. 

Hmm, maybe he was more overcharded than he’d thought. He usually kept the most mutinous thoughts to himself. 

“ _Ouch_. Okay, see—that? Not kind,” said Rodimus. “We’ll work on it.” 

“What,” said Getaway. “Was. The. Question.” Condescending _aft_. 

“Right! The question.”

Getaway’s fingers twitched. He came to the conclusion that he was twice as likely to strangle tipsy Rodimus as he was normal Rodimus.

“Is there a reason you hate me so much?”

It took Getaway a second to realize that was the question. 

“Like, we never met before this whole quest thing, right? I didn’t, I dunno, hustle you at pool in the rec room? Or, or wait—you weren’t onboard the ARK-32 when I helped Sideswipe rig the washracks, were you? Because for the record, that was his idea; I just didn’t have anything better to do.”

Getaway was honestly a little offended that Rodimus thought he’d have been able to dupe him. _Him_ , Special Ops. Prowl’s best. He was even more offended at the suggestion that his antagonism might stem from something so— so _petty_.

“No.” Getaway pulled the cloak tighter around him. He was more agitated by the question than he should’ve been. How much of the truth? How much fabrication? Rodimus shifted, and the world shifted, and he felt like he was peering down the edge of a steep crevasse. 

“I didn’t like, get your comm number at some point and forget to call?’

“ _No_.” That one wasn’t even worth _considering_. 

“Ok, so? What gives?”

“Why do I hate you…” Getaway breathed, and the question was so loaded that for a split second his processor threw a blank. And then he barked a laugh. “You exist, for a start.”

He saw Rodimus nod slowly from the corner of his optic. 

“Too cool, got it. My hot bod and killer personality intimidate you.”

“ _No_ , shut up”. 

Couldn’t he take _anything_ seriously? Getaway’s rage sparked and caught fire, fueled by an excess of engex and bad decisions. 

“I mean, if you can’t handle the heat—”

“You let him aboard, “ Getaway snarled. 

“...Who?”

“Who do you _think_?” Rodimus knew very well _who_. The tightening of his fingers on the flask betrayed him as surely as the uneasy timbre of his voice. Rodimus was a lot of things—most of them unflattering—but a good liar he was _not_.

“Oh. _Him_.”

“You let him onto our _ship_ ,” Getaway hissed. The engex had gone to his processor, and now it seeped through his mouth like steam from a boiler. “With all of the mecha trying to escape the war. A shipful of traumatized, trigger-happy rejects, and now they’ve got to take orders from the genocidal despot that started it all?” 

He drew away from Rodimus, and sat up straight—mostly straight, with the help of a hand—so that he could stare him down. To his credit, Rodimus didn’t flinch, but Getaway knew better than to trust that rueful gaze.

“We _had_ him; we were going to get _rid_ of him,” he continued vehemently. “And now he strolls around the Lost Light like he fucking owns it. You know, letting a prisoner steal command out from under you, that— that takes a _special_ kind of stupid. I’d be impressed, if it weren’t so sad.”

Rodimus’ jaw tightened. 

“I’ve been doing my best to make this quest work, you know,” he said. “Because it _matters_ to people. And yeah, maybe I don’t always have all the answers. Maybe I don’t always make the best _decisions_. But you don’t get to imply that I don’t look out for my _crew_.”

“And you don’t get to talk about the _quest_ like it isn’t a personal obsession that you dragged everyone else into,” Getaway countered. “Newsflash, even _that’s_ about him now”. He jabbed a finger at Rodimus’ chestplate. “Whatever good you _thought_ you were doing, he’s twisted it. Because that’s what he _does_. He makes everything about _him_ , and it becomes everyone else’s problem.” He laughed, short and harsh. “I guess that’s something you two have in common.”

“ _Hey._ Don’t fucking _compare_ us,” demanded Rodimus. “I’m _nothing_ like Megatron. I was doing my _duty_. It’s not like Optimus gave me much of a choice, did he?”

“Oh, please. You had a _choice_. A hell of a lot more than the rest of us did. The Lost Light was _your_ ship, and _you_ chose to put your need for daddy’s approval over everyone else,” Getaway seethed.

Rodimus took a deep breath. When he exhaled, steam leaked from his vents. 

“You don’t say no to the Prime,” he said tightly. 

“You do if he’s so far up his own aft that he can’t tell a _ploy_ when he sees one ”. Optimus didn’t deserve anyone’s loyalty. He’d run them all through the shredder to prolong his little wartime codependency. Who would he be without the looming spectre of Megatron? Nobody worth listening to.

Rodimus took another swig from the flask, which had to be running empty by now. He held it out to Getaway without looking at him. 

Getaway snatched it with a little more force than necessary. He tipped the last of the engex into his intake, and let out a long, angry breath. Slowly, his fuel pump settled. The jagged peaks in his EM field smoothed themselves out, and the fight bled from his shoulders. He slumped back against the wall, avoiding contact with Rodimus.

Rodimus, who had gone quiet, and yet Getaway couldn’t even muster the energy to enjoy the victory. He watched the flames dance across the face of the nearest corpse, and wondered which of them felt hollower

“Have you ever had a _moment_ ,” he asked lowly, “where you realize that everything in your life has been meaningless? Just the machinations of other mecha, sitting up high in their towers...” He snorted, shaking his head. “Mine was being born.”

Tyrest had been the kicker—the moment he’d realized that no one would be coming for him. But none of his life had ever been his own. 

“And you know whose fault that is?” he continued doggedly. “ _His_. Because without _him_ , without the war, I wouldn’t even be here. You might think that’d make me _grateful_ , but for what? For _what_?”

He was talking too much again, but couldn’t bring himself to stop. If he could make just one person _understand_ — 

“Every time I look at that ugly, _smug_ face it’s a reminder that I deserve better than _this_.

Rodimus dimmed his optics, and let his head fall back against the wall. 

“Hate me, if it makes you feel better,” he said.

It didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments stoke the fire ;>


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant for this to be one big final chapter, but I accidentally plotted with this fic and I didn’t have it in me to edit 6000 words so here we are.

Sobriety arrived too soon, rapping sharply at the walls of Getaway’s battered processor. 

He half-onlined his optics, bracing himself against the dull ache that tended to accompany too much engex on an empty tank. High grade burned too quickly to be truly useful; A few hours later, the only thing it was fueling was the tremor in his right hand, and the throbbing pain at his temple. He felt light and hollow, like someone had scooped out his internals and replaced them with fiberglass.

Getaway dismissed the errors that cropped up at the edge of his HUD, a burgeoning bad habit. But there was nothing to do about the toxicity report besides ingest quality fuel—something he wouldn’t be finding at the bottom of this frozen pit. 

He expelled a sigh, wondering for a moment if he shouldn’t just go back to recharge. Anything to avoid having to deal with whatever fallout awaited him now, at the end of the flask. But that would be giving up, and he wasn’t about to slip away quietly in the night, dismally unaware of his own end. So instead, he clenched his fist to still the shaking, and finished onlining his optics.

It was hard to face the weight of his mistakes in the light of day. Harder still, to realize that he and Rodimus had slumped over in the middle of the night, and that he would now have to suffer the indignity of removing his helm from the other mech’s chest. 

_Proud of yourself?_ asked the voice that sounded suspiciously like Prowl. Like he didn’t fragging know he was an embarrassment to the Diplomatic Corps.

His tanks flipped when he shifted—revolting against whatever sour dregs remained—but Getaway would weld his intake shut before he purged. Energon was energon, and in this place, every drop was sacred. His levels hovered at an ugly, but non-critical 21%—which wouldn’t do him any good tomorrow, but left him alive for now. 

He glanced over to check that, yes, Rodimus had survived the night too. That unwelcome, but increasingly familiar mixture of irritation and relief settled like a rock in his tank. 

Rodimus’ face was slack in recharge, erasing the years of war and strife. It made him look nearly as young as he acted, thought Getaway, as he absently traced the line of his jaw.

 _Vulnerable_ added the part of him that still had its priorities straight. He ignored the other part, the one that wanted badly to press his thumb against the soft curve of Rodimus’ bottom lip until it gave. Mouths were overrated, anyway.

Getaway glanced down at his own frame. No paint transfers or otherwise incriminatory marks, which was a _good_ thing, and not disappointing in the least. It wasn’t off the _table_ , per se—nothing wrong with using your unwitting enemy as an outlet, was there?—but clanging Rodimus without his wits about him would have been a wasted effort. Flitting satisfaction for no real gain. 

His memories of the night were muted. He could make out the shape of them, but they blurred at the edges—the result of excessive engex consumption, lingering processor damage from the cold-induced crash, or both. Rodimus’ smile flickered in his mind’s eye, a bright, withering force against the darkness. He remembered a conversation, one that’d sparked heat in his voice and frame, and got the impression that he’d said some ill-advised things.

Getaway stood up. Too abruptly, he realized, as his gyros spun and sent him stumbling, but he managed to catch himself on the cave wall and after a moment the dizziness abated. He moved again—more carefully this time, but _away_ from the softly venting source of his frustration. His feet led him of their own accord to the centre of the room, to the altar that sat cold and arresting before the throne.

He reached out unthinkingly to trace the visage that adorned its surface, grimacing beneath the ice. He traced the grooves that ran from the empty pool of Mortilus’ open mouth and down the length of the metal in a symmetrical, branching pattern. Deep enough to ferry liquid to the slab’s edges.

Getaway knew death. He understood ambition, and regularly courted betrayal. By all accounts, he should have been comfortable with Mortilus. He wasn’t. Everywhere he turned, the god’s optics glittered at him with ruby-red appraisal. It was the harsh and measured stare of a judiciary; one who’d looked into the fathoms of his spark and found him lacking. 

He pulled his hands away from the altar as something knotted in his chassis. He looked away, and met the gaze of a nearby corpse, whose dead optics still lay fixed on the throne. There was something different about this one, he thought. Nearly all of the corpses they’d examined so far had been well-dressed—in luxurious, heat-sparing cloaks, and other accessories just for show. But this mech stood apart from even that display of prestige. His armour was set with the same red gems that signified Mortilus throughout the temple. His robes were a faded black, with patterns that Getaway suspected mirrored the grooves that he had just followed with his fingers. His helm crest was shaped suspiciously like a diadem. On the ground beside him lay a datapad, shattered beyond fixing.

Getaway thought about the pad sitting in his own subspace. He considered the waste of energy it would be to try and revive it—it wasn’t as though he had much to spare—and then pulled it out anyway. The mech in the tomb had clutched it so tightly, as though it were the last thing of value on this dead planet. 

He inspected the ports on the pad, and determined that while they _were_ outdated—ancient, really—he was equipped for the job. No self-respecting agent went out without a few dozen adapters to ease the way. 

Getaway plugged into the pad, and waited. For a few, long seconds there was nothing. And then he exhaled in triumph as he felt the answering tug on his systems—the pad stealing the charge it needed to flicker on with a weak crackle. 

An initial inspection suggested that this had been a personal pad—the journaling of the sad sucker who’d frozen to death with only a corpse for company. The last entry displayed a simple, if ominous, message. 

_We killed the summer_.

Vague. Poetic. Useless. 

Flipping back through the earlier writings was barely more illuminatory. At some point, corruption had set in, and most of the words were garbled, dissolved into static or unreadable glyphs. What scraps remained painted a bleak, if incomplete picture. 

Winter is upon us. We were unprepared for how harsh it would be, lulled into complacency by the long and prosperous summer. Everything that we have built has been destroyed. The heating has failed, and left the settlement frozen. We have been unable to harvest energon, as the cold has rendered our extractors useless. Our ships are long dismantled, a necessity at the time, but foolish now. We knew that winter would be hard, but Mortilus’ anger is unrelenting. We have failed his test. We were not worthy. 

Those of us privileged few, Mortilus’ inner circle, have sought shelter in the temple. We beseech Him to show us mercy. There is no heating besides the fires, and those will die out. There is no energon, save within ourselves. We have no way to combat the cold that has rendered our technology useless, nor means of escape. His Reverence says we must have faith. He is right, of course, for Mortilus speaks through him. He asks for our energon so that he might be preserved, and continue to intercede on our behalf. So many have willingly sacrificed, and yet I hesitate. I am a coward. I have crept away from the others, to await my fate. Death comes for us all, and I will embrace Him.Primus awaits.

Getaway unplugged the pad, tossing it away from him in disgust before it could siphon any more of his power or patience. There was nothing useful in that mess. Just a bunch of bumbling colonists who’d gotten in over their helms and paid the price for it. Well, he didn’t answer to their god, and he wouldn’t suffer their mistakes. 

A few metres away, Rodimus stirred at the clatter. He groaned softly, and after a few moments, rose stiffly to his feet. When he stretched—hands above his head—Getaway got an eyeful of sleek waist cabling, tucked away beneath flashy armour. 

Rodimus looked around. When his gaze finally settled on Getaway, the grin he offered up was slightly strained.

“So, that was fun?” he offered. “Let’s do it again sometime.” 

Getaway chose not to dignify that with a response.

“They’re all dead,” he said instead. “There’s no one left on this planet.” They’d assumed as much, but the datapad had been the nail in the coffin.

“What?”

Getaway gestured vaguely in the direction of the discarded pad.

“This planet’s seasons stretch three hundred years,” he said, assuming that Rodimus had paid zero attention during the briefing. “They showed up some time before the winter. They weren’t ready for it when it came. Things broke, failed, whatever— and when they couldn’t fix it, the important ones holed up here.”

“Didn’t they have ships?” asked Rodimus with a frown. “Why didn’t they just _leave_?”

Getaway shrugged. Maybe it’d been too cold for the engines. Maybe they had stripped them for parts early on, assuming they could rebuild once they’d cyberformed. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. They’d stayed. They’d died. They were next.

“So they starved here,” muttered Rodimus. 

“Some of them faster than others,” Getaway said, with a meaningful glance at who he presumed was _His Reverence_. “Started siphoning to keep the high priest alive. For all the good it did them.”

He was surprised by the shadow that flitted briefly over Rodimus’ face. 

“Only him?”

“Seems he had them wrapped around his fingers,” Getaway said disparagingly. “Death’s little servants”. But he wondered what it must have been like, to wield such _importance_ that mecha scrambled to sustain you at the cost of their own lives. He thought about how quick Rodimus had been to offer his own fuel up, and this time the strangling discomfort was tinged with something hotter—something that wrapped itself around his internals and _squeezed_. 

“That’s—he had a responsibility,” said Rodimus. “He didn’t have the right to...” He trailed off with a frown.

“He reaped the benefits of his position,” Getaway countered. That was the way the world worked. Rodimus had somehow managed to blunder his way through life without that revelation, and that naivety wouldn’t help him when the moment came for him to relinquish his throne.

“He abused it,” returned Rodimus, without heat. He sounded exhausted. “I’d never ask—never _expect_ someone to… well, you know.” His gaze flicked to Getaway’s wrist. 

Getaway snorted. 

“No,” he agreed. “ _You_ wouldn’t.”

Rodimus frowned, evidently trying to figure out if he was being insulted. 

Getaway turned, and walked back in the direction of the altar. He dragged his fingers along it as he passed. 

“I assume you _don’t_ want to hear about the sacrifices then,” he deadpanned, casting a glance over his shoulder. He didn't _know_ anything for certain, but as before, the extrapolation was worth the grimace on Rodimus’ face. 

“So things got a little culty,” said Rodimus, hunching his shoulders. “They’re gone, which means it’s none of our business.” He looked around, shifting in place. “Let’s talk about something else.” Avoidant today, were we? Unfortunate, since Getaway found himself in the mood to _push_. What could he say? Hangovers made him vindictive. 

He stopped at the foot of the steps that led to the throne. Considered it for a moment, and then stepped carefully up the slate blocks to deposit himself in the lofty chair. He leaned on one arm, settling his fist on his chin and ignoring the frost that nipped at his elbow. 

It was easy to imagine a crowd of mecha in Rodimus’ place, looking up to the throne—to _him_ —for guidance. He envisioned a hundred enraptured stares, hanging on to his every word as his voice projected across the cavern and curled around their eager audials. He’d spin them a tale that made them feel better about themselves when they went to berth, and in return they’d fall over each other to satisfy him. Offering up their attention, their devotion, their very _sparks_ —Priest or Prime, what did it matter when mecha looked upon you as a god?

“Got what he deserved, I guess,” muttered Rodimus, from where he was examining the dead priest.

The illusion splintered, and then it was just the two of them again. No idolizing crowd, just Rodimus’ prickling judgement. Getaway looked at him, really _looked_ at him—all self-righteous flame and liberty blue optics—and something in him twisted. 

“For once in your life,” he snapped, “could you just shut up?”

He watched Rodimus reel back at the venom in his voice, and it brought him an oily satisfaction—almost enough to soothe the sting of his shattered fantasy.

“What’s your problem?" demanded Rodimus. 

“My problem,” said Getaway, narrowing his optics, “is that I’m sick of _you_. Sick of looking at your face. Sick of hearing you prosthelytize about leadership like you haven’t ruined every chance you’ve been given. Like you’ve got anything of _worth_ to contribute.” Rodimus had no business making judgements—not after Overlord. Not after Megatron. One night of getting cozy by the fire and letting Rodimus blather on didn’t mean that Getaway cared about what he had to say.

“I’m sorry, remind me— _which_ of us carried the matrix?” asked Rodimus, because as they both knew, that was all that he had to lean on. “ _Who’s_ leading this quest?” 

“Oh forgive me, great one,” Getaway said in his most scathing tone. “I forgot that I’m supposed to be humbled by your presence. Would you prefer it if I knelt and told you what a good Prime you are?” He watched the angry flush climb onto Rodimus’ face, and triumph flared hot in his core. 

“It’d be better than this,” Rodimus managed. 

“And I’d be better than _you_ ,” Getaway scoffed, before his processor could catch up with his mouth. 

“Better at _what_?”

“Everything, for a start,” he muttered.

“No—better at _what_?” demanded Rodimus, striding forward. “Being a _Prime?_ You think this is a cakewalk?” 

“I _think_ that there’s probably more to it than serving as a glorified cup holder for the matrix, and letting everyone else solve your problems for you,” Getaway said. Rodimus was in his face now, but he held his gaze defiantly. “Can you even _call_ yourself a Prime, when you had the thing for all of five seconds? Not exactly one for the history books.”

Rodimus flinched, and Getaway pressed the advantage, pushing himself from his throne and enjoying the way he stumbled back. 

“You think I asked for this?” managed Rodimus, as he caught his balance on the lowest step. “Wanted it?”

 _Does it matter? You got it all the fragging same_ , Getaway thought viciously. _And what have you done with it?_

“Tell me, what does the great Rodimus Prime _want_?” he asked, advancing on him. He followed Rodimus to the floor, herding him back against the altar. “No, actually _don’t_ ,” he decided, as Rodimus opened his mouth. “I’ll tell you.” 

“You don’t _know_ me,” insisted Rodimus. 

“I know enough,” Getaway sneered. “You say you want what’s best for your crew. You say you want to _protect_ them. But really, you’re no better than the rest of us. You just want the validation. You want people to think you’re a _hero_ , so you don’t have to face the fact that you’re not Primus’ _chosen_ , just Primus’ favourite _fuck-up._ ”

Another wince.

Getaway felt heady with victory. Arguing with Rodimus—breaking down his practiced nonchalance until he was vibrating with an anger to rival his own, gripping the side of the altar to keep from lashing out—it made his spark pulse red hot. Brackish jealousy couldn’t compete with the hunger clawing at his circuits.

“You’re not the only one that _wants_ things, you know,” he snarled. They were nearly chest to chest, and he wondered if Rodimus could feel the heat rolling off his frame. He was the only that knew how it threatened to seep out from beneath his panels—that it was urging him in hard, dizzying pulses to take what was right in front of him. 

All he had to do was reach out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to get working on some new projects for 2021, so the rest of this should be up soon ;D


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Let (him) taste the fires of hell or else let (him) be mine and mine alone” - Getaway, probably.

There was a moment where Getaway warred with himself, fans straining in the silence. And then he shoved Rodimus back against the altar, hard enough that his knees buckled and deposited him on top of the smooth slab. 

Rodimus gaped at him unattractively, as though Getaway had committed some unadulterated sin by laying his hands on him. 

Well, he’d do better than that. 

Before Rodimus could think to get up, Getaway followed, straddling him in a few, quick motions. But true to his nature, Rodimus didn’t stay frozen for long. Getaway barely had time to register the shock in his optics before they narrowed, and an indecipherable glint took up residence. The hands that had flown to grip his back—too quick to be anything but reflex—tightened, and the mouth that fell on his throat an instant later was as merciless as it was deliberate.

A fresh flare of arousal mixed with the relief that Rodimus ~~wanted him~~ was on the same page, at least as far as _this_ was concerned. 

“You. Make. No. Fragging. Sense,” said Rodimus, as he dragged hungry kisses along Getaway’s intake. 

What wasn’t to get? Anger, lust—it was all the same to him. Getaway didn’t need pretty little words or sweet overtures from Rodimus to want to take him apart.

“Why don’t you do something _useful_ with that mouth,” he suggested. The words came out shakier than he’d intended, unraveling at the seams as Rodimus latched onto a prominent cable and sucked. 

Energon rushed to the area, racing the flood of heat down south. A hint of teeth— _danger, too close_ —sent a sharp little thrill skittering up his spine, and when Rodimus bit down it punched a soft groan from his vocalizer. 

He was glad that Rodimus had the sense not to be gentle—the idea that Getaway would want anything slow or tender from _him_ was laughable. Fingers dug bruisingly into the cables at his hips, yanking him closer, and the heat in him surged.

They hadn’t all been blessed with pretty intakes, but Getaway knew how to compensate; his hands wandered the length of Rodimus’ chassis, seeking weak points with ruthless resolve. There were plenty of gaps that he could sink his fingers into—an excess of biolight trails and open vents to rake across or delve inside of—and the muffled, approving noises that his efforts garnered him trickled down to his array in a steady ebb of arousal. 

He _should_ have had a plan for this. His frame was one of the more powerful tools in his arsenal, and he should have been spinning this encounter to his advantage. But as an engine rev triggered a wave of feedback from his sensornet—vibrations running along the length of him—Getaway found that he was more invested in getting inside of Rodimus’ armour than his head.

When Rodimus licked a stripe up a main fuel line, Getaway shuddered and pressed forward. He ground down, looking for something to soothe the ache in his array—pressure, friction, _anything_. The static that jumped between their plating did little to help, licking at his circuits and ramping his charge even higher. 

“Come _on_ ,” he demanded, and this time Rodimus moved with him.

He gave in to the temptation to transform away his valve panel, and spared a brief moment to be thankful that Rodimus’ proximity would keep anything sensitive from freezing. And then the sensation of warm, firm metal against slick mesh and primed nodes erased any lingering concerns from his processor.

Rodimus sucked in a breath as Getaway’s bare valve slid along his spike panel, but he didn’t say anything. That was something that Getaway _hadn’t_ expected from this—the quiet. He’d braced himself for endless chatter and irritating observations, things to push to the background as he chased his satisfaction, but there was a tense focus to Rodimus that he’d never felt before—a sharp conviction in the way that he mouthed at his cables and left marks in the pliable metal. 

Marks that would be difficult to explain away, thought Getaway, even as he shuddered.

He ground down again, seeking a little relief for the sticky arousal plaguing his frame. Just as he’d decided that he was going to have to do everything himself, Rodimus hooked an arm firmly around him, and swung them both onto the altar. 

Getaway settled on top of the other mech, giving him a clear view of the derelict chamber and all its empty worshippers. Was it _sacreligious_ to be doing this here? Probably. But he was too wound up to care about their questionable choice of surface, or their equally macabre audience. Let them watch. They’d been looking for the divine, after all.

He pushed Rodimus down flat with one hand, feeling the pulse of his spark under his fingers, the swirling thrum thrum of energy that sustained him, and had at one point powered the matrix. For a second, Getaway was hyper-aware of the ragged edge of his vents, of the unsteady oscillation of his own spark in response to the possessive current running through it.

“What exactly are we doing here?” asked Rodimus, his optics smoldering with a low, blue flame. 

Making the most of things. Seizing an opportunity. Did it matter? This didn’t _mean_ anything. 

“Do I have to explain how this works?” he snarked. Rodimus was the one pinned under the weight of him, clutched in the vice of his thighs, so why did _Getaway_ suddenly feel like the one who was trapped? “Just _frag_ me already”.

Rodimus’ panel snapped open even as his mouth snapped shut. Getaway didn’t spare a glance for his spike; he knew without looking that it was probably as obnoxiously bright as the rest of him. _It would do_ , he thought, as the textured length of it slid along the nodes that lined his valve, making them light up in turn. He angled himself so that the tip of it pressed inside, and Rodimus groaned and arched closer. 

They didn’t have any time to waste, every vent pushing them closer to the inevitable shutdown. The lubricant his frame was producing in response to the spike prodding at his walls wouldn’t be helping his fuel levels. But he’d been dripping since they’d started arguing, and it wasn’t too difficult to sink down and take the rest. At any rate, the burn of the stretch was worth the small, wounded noise that Rodimus made, arching upwards as he slapped a hand against the altar for support. 

“You’re such an aft,” he said in a strained voice.

Getaway didn’t answer for a moment, distracted by the almost torturous pleasure of a spike activating all of his nodes at once, pressing and rubbing unrelentingly against them without a buffer program to dull the sensation. It had been a while since he’d done this for real. He could fake it with the best of them—had played the honeypot more times than he could count— but he hadn’t wanted to mute any of his receptors for this. Stupid or selfish, this was for _him_. 

“Takes one to know one,” he finally managed. And no one could blame him for being short on wit, when there was a ridge pressing _right_ up against a sensitive nerve cluster. “ _Move_ ”. 

Getaway ran covetous hands along the chestplate before him, bracing himself with a sharp _ah_ as Rodimus bucked upwards. He met him on the next thrust, working to keep his balance as charge surged through him, skittering up his spine and across his relays. When he gripped Rodimus’ spoiler for leverage, he thrilled at the sharp noise it earned him. Soon enough, they’d found a rhythm that worked, one that generated a litany of hissed curses and bitten-off moans in the . 

_Next time_ , he mused through the pleasure, _I want him on his knees_. The thought of Rodimus pliant before him, mouth pressed to his array with single-minded devotion, was almost enough to make him overload on the spot. 

But there wouldn’t _be_ a next time, would there? Because Rodimus would be dead, or out of the way, and Getaway the winner, with one less obstacle on his path to greatness.

The steam from their shared ventilations had begun to condense—crystallizing in the frigid air and forming a light crust on the exposed edges of his armour. Getaway ignored it, at first, bent on chasing the overload that he could feel building on the horizon, but before long it became too distracting, and a shiver overtook him.

“I’m fine,” he hissed at Rodimus’ look, but that only caused a stubborn expression to coalesce on his face. The next instant, he was being rolled over, forced to stifle a yelp as the reorientation jostled Rodimus’ spike inside of him. 

Rodimus was _lucky_ that the altar had been wide enough to accommodate the change in position. If they’d ended up on the floor, Getaway would have sincerely reconsidered the merits of killing him. But the indignity of having his control seized from him melted nearly as fast as the frost on his armour, as Rodimus used the new position to thrust forward. 

He didn’t seem inclined to keep up the rough pace from earlier, and the next time he pushed in it was slow and deep, spreading the calipers up to the top of Getaway’s valve with unhurried determination. He did it again, and Getaway stifled a moan as it sent a syrupy heat sliding down his circuits. 

“Don’t,” he managed, but Rodimus did it a third time, sliding warm hands up his chassis and nosing back into his throat. 

“Don’t?” rasped Rodimus against his plating. “Thought you wanted me to frag you.”

“You think this qualifies as fragging?” breathed Getaway. “We’ll run out of fuel before I even finis—” he broke off with a hitch as Rodimus pulled his thigh up, changing the angle and sliding along a line of previously neglected sensors. “Harder,” he demanded instead, but the idiot still couldn’t take direction, because all he did was nip at the crook of his throat, causing another jolt to run through him. 

And it didn’t even matter, because he could tell he was getting close anyway. Rodimus’ hands were too soft on his frame, but they found sensitive cables and seams to thumb across, and his engine sputtered when he pressed into the cluster of nodes at the front of his valve, sending a cascade of pleasure across his relays. His spike worked deeper with every roll of his hips, burning a path straight to Getaway’s spark. 

“ _Harder_ ,” he insisted, as he wrapped both legs around Rodimus’ waist in an attempt to get him closer, and the fragger only hummed and ground sweetly against his ceiling node. 

Heat flared at the corners of Getaway’s optics, light springing from the overtaxed filaments. They stung with anger, with pleasure, with— something else. He tucked his face into Rodimus’ throat so that he wouldn’t see and think that he— that he— 

“C’mon,” encouraged Rodimus at his audial. “C’mon, I wanna feel it. You’re close, right?”

And his cliche, eager little entreaties _should_ have killed Getaway’s arousal, but instead a strangled noise ripped itself from his vocalizer, and he gripped the edge of the altar as the pleasure bowled him over. Charge flickered in his seams, licking at his internals as it swept up and over him in an unstoppable tide. Rodimus let out an answering groan, lurching forward to bury himself deeper and venting shakily against his collar as Getaway’s overload dragged him along.

They collapsed together, shaking with aftershocks, until the tacky fluids between them were too hard to ignore, and Rodimus shakily disentangled himself so that they could close up. He didn’t move far, however, remaining on the little warm island they’d made of the altar so that he could sit facing Getaway. Getaway lay where he was, too drained to do anything else.

“Now, _that_ —that we should definitely do again sometime,” Rodimus mumbled. 

It wasn’t the _worst_ suggestion he’d ever made. 

The silence that fell over them then was surprisingly somber. Getaway checked his fuel levels, and a despondent 13% blinked back at him. They stayed there, wrapped in the quiet of the hollow sanctuary, until eventually Rodimus spoke again.

“Nyon.”

“What?”

“Nyon,” Rodimus repeated. “Last night, you asked if I’d ever had a _moment_ where things felt meaningless. Nyon was my moment.”

Ah. It was a case of ‘I’ll show you mine, you show me yours’. Getaway had to admit, for all of his irritating desire to _understand_ Rodimus, the answer was kind of disappointing. 

“Nyon’s not the only city that went up in flames,” he muttered. “Lots of mecha have lost homes.” _Some of us never had them_.

“I blew it up.”

Getaway jolted, having expected—well, anything but _that_.

“Zeta was going to funnel the city into his war machine. _Fuel_ for his weapons. No one helped—not Megatron, not Optimus. Just left them—us— to be processed as fodder. Like we were… like we were nothing.”

Getaway had heard about Zeta’s little project. The perks of working directly under the Autobot SIC included the occasional glimpse of classified info—as missions allowed. It took a lot to make him balk, but those vamparcs had been something else. 

“So I went through with our last resort,” Rodimus continued, staring down at his knees. “I blew it up. I _saved_ them. And then I asked Primus to forgive me, because I sure as Pit never would.” He exhaled, long and slow. “Guess I got my forgiveness, in the end. Doesn’t feel like it though.”

 _Primus’ favourite fuck-up_ , Getaway thought, but this time the words crumbled to dust before he could voice them.

“I don’t _know_ why the matrix chose me. Maybe you’re right—maybe it didn’t. Maybe I was just _there_. But now I’ve gotta live up to it,” said Rodimus. He looked at Getaway, and his mouth twisted into a half-smile. “Which means taking care of my people, even when they’re complete crankshafts.”

Getaway, too tired to untangle the knot that had become of his internals, settled for whacking Rodimus vindictively in the shin.

“See, the difference between you and me,” Rodimus continued cheerily, “is that I _know_ I’m an asshole.”

Getaway stared up at the ceiling. He wondered if he could be so lucky as to have one of the stalactites detach from the ceiling and solve the problem for him. 

Rodimus sombered again, nudging him in the leg.

“Why would you wanna be a Prime, anyway? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Rodimus had remembered that little slip, then. Unfortunate. 

_Because then you’re immortal_ , Getaway thought. _Because no one can ever take that power from you. Because—_

“People love you,” he said. A bitter twist of words that he hadn’t meant to release into the world. 

Rodimus huffed a laugh. 

“Not as many as you’d think.” 

Getaway thought about the loyalty he’d seen. How it’d practically shone from Drift, before he’d martyred himself. How it still emanated from Ultra Magnus, making him bend around the stick up his aft. And how he’d never managed to claw out anything similar. 

“Enough.” 

Rodimus didn’t argue. His face was a mask of uncertainty, cut through with no small amount of exhaustion. Getaway could dig his fingers into that cracked foundation if he wanted to, and fashion a chasm. Pull the rift wider, just to fall headfirst into it. 

But he wouldn’t. He’d keep the brittle peace, for just a while longer. 

And then Rodimus jerked upwards from his slouch, so suddenly that Getaway was also shocked to awareness. He scanned for danger on instinct, for the hint of movement or sound that would herald their end, and found... nothing. 

“We’re here!” Rodimus exclaimed. “Mags, come in! Yes, yes, I can hear you. No, we’re fine. Well, mostly fine. Probably depends on your definition of fine, but _alive_? We’re acing that one.” His laugh was a bell, ringing out to fill the dead space that’d been pressing in around them.

Getaway sat up warily, spark whirling in his audials.

“You know, I’m so happy to hear your voice I don’t even care that this is a lecture.”

Getaway let Rodimus finish his conversation, so tense that he didn’t even realize he’d been holding in his vents until it all escaped him in one big exhale. 

“Okay—okay, see you soon. And you know what? Tell bucket-head that I don’t wanna see him until at least midday tomorrow. I’m declaring this a Megatron-free rescue.”

Getaway almost snorted. Like sweeping him out of view for a few cycles would change anything. He wasn’t interested in empty gestures 

And yet, the knowledge that Rodimus had done as much for him, because of what he’d said, rattled around in his chassis.

Rodimus cast him a tired grin. He glowed in the dim light of the cavern, like some sad, forgotten deity. 

“Hey, you hear that? They’re coming for us. We _made_ it.” 

Getaway let out a deep vent, and lay back down to await their pickup. 

“I heard.”

He should have felt exhilarated by the rescue— here it was, more proof that Primus wasn’t done with him yet, that he had greater things in store—but mostly, he felt numb. Tired. 

Rodimus, on the other hand, had rediscovered his energy for idle pratter. 

“The storm in the upper atmosphere cleared up, plus they know where we are, so it won’t be long before we’re back,” he said, swinging one leg against the side of the altar. 

Back to work. Back to best laid plans and everything still standing in his way. In another life, maybe they wouldn't be here, at the intersection of antipathy and understanding. But what-ifs were useless. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow this, whatever _this_ was, to change things. 

Because whatever his intentions—selfish or selfless, good or bad— _Rodimus_ didn’t know what needed to be done. Didn't know what it would take to set things right. 

But Getaway did. And when the time finally came, he wouldn’t hesitate. 

He knew, deep down, that he couldn’t afford to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Insert joke about consecrated ground]
> 
> And that’s a wrap! Thank you to everyone that joined me on this journey to make Getaway suffer Emotions and Perhaps The Stirrings Of A Conscience. It was never supposed to be this long, but I’m so pleased to have converted some Getaway stans and Getarod shippers along the way. This complicated bastard needs more love ;D
> 
> I had to kill so many darlings while writing this fic... and they’re all going in the sequel. Can’t say WHEN that’ll be exactly, but these boys have too much left to say for me to never return to this little what-if. 
> 
> Come join me on twitter @spidingsadly if you'd like to keep up with my 2021 fic plans!


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